ABSTRACT
The novels of Bhabani Bhattacharya, So Many Hungers (1947) and He Who Rides a Tiger (1954), are the texts at the center of Chapter 4. The novels grapple with the question of how to represent trauma, which the author considers unspeakable but crucial to communicate to the world. Bhattacharya's approach shuttles between realism and a more fragmentary discourse. Ashis Nandy's concept of the mnemonic is helpful in interrogating the latter, which includes screams, ellipses, and other forms that push back against the realist, documentary impulse. As existing significations of race, capital, institutions, and caste were changing, Bhattacharya sought to find a language for collective trauma.
