ABSTRACT
For many decades now, Anita Desai’s English novel Clear Light of Day (1980) has been a canonical text that has offered possibilities for discussions about Hyderabadi Muslims and urban citizenship and belonging in the long shadow of Partition. However, while the novel helps to bring within the same frame Hyderabad, Partition, and the politics of the city, it also exemplies classic narratives of lavish Hyderabadi Muslim lifestyles by evoking static Orientalist stereotypes of decadence and excess in its representation of Hyderabadi Muslims. Arguably, it was only in the early 2000s that literary texts in English with more complex Hyderabadi urban subjectivities began to appear. Some of the novels that ctionally engage with the issue of urban outcasts in the context of Hyderabad include Samina Ali’s Madras on Rainy Days (2004), Huma R. Kidwai’s The Hussaini Alam House (2012), and Ian Bedford’s The Last Candles of the Night (2014). Another very important development in this regard has been the revision and reprinting of Zeenuth Futehally’s 1951 novel Zohra in 2004.
