Babu fictions : alienation in contemporary Indian English novels / Tabish Khair.

Includes bibliographic references and index.

Contexts of Babu fictions -- Maps of Babu fiction -- The rhetoric of exile -- A cosmopolitan identity: the birthmarks of hybridity -- Language: problems of dialogue and mapping -- Caste: the Hiranyagarbha syndrome -- The urban landscape: neighborhoods, a class apart -- Gender and class: a well-placed displacement -- The Indian and the universal in Raja Rao: making the world -- R.K. Narayan: a view from the window -- V.S. Naipaul: narrating from the empty centre -- Rushdie's recipe for newness -- The example of Amitav Ghosh: (re)establishing connections -- Afterword: conflictual spaces --Appendices: Imperialism and colonization. Aliens from Marx. Caste and class.