Malti Sharma

K. A. Agarwal, Indian English Fiction (Jaipur: Book Enclave, 2007), pp.292 Rs.795.00

The present book is the collection of 19 essays on ten Indian writers in English. The book has been edited by Dr. K. A. Agarwal, Retd. Reader, Dept. of English, G. K. University, Haridwar. It includes articles on the writers like Raja Rao, Mulk Raj Anand, Kamala Markandaya, Shashi Deshpande, Shiv K. Kumar, Arun Joshi, Bharati Mukherjee and so on. 
Most of the essays in the anthology are on the Indian English writers of the first generation, (except Bharati Mukherjee and Arundhati Roy). No doubt, almost all the essays are well written yet the absence of the essays on the modern emerging writers can easily be noticed only by going through the contents of the book. It would have been quite useful provided it had included articles, to name a few, on Anita Desai, Nayantara Sahgal, Manju Kapur, Khushwant Singh, Anurag Mahur, Vikram Seth and so on. However, the book will, certainly, be useful for the research scholars and young teachers who concentrate on the study of Indian English fiction.