ABSTRACT

This essay focuses on fiction in English, written within and published from India since 2000 in the genre of ‘mythology-inspired fiction.’ In doing so it discusses the socioeconomic context out of which this continually expanding body of fiction has emerged. The essay is interested in what we might term as ‘genre’ fiction, its parameters and audiences, and thus what such a term means within the context of post-millennial India. It examines how we might approach the reading of this body of writing from a non-Indian socio-cultural context and how we might think of its association to the field of global genre fiction more broadly.