Leela Prasad, "The Audacious Raconteur: Sovereignty and Storytelling in Colonial India" (Cornell UP, 2020)

New Books in Indian Religions · Dec 9, 2020 · 30m

Can a subject be sovereign in a hegemony? Can creativity be reined in by forces of empire?

The Audacious Raconteur: Sovereignty and Storytelling in Colonial India (Cornell UP, 2020) argues that even the most hegemonic circumstances cannot suppress "audacious raconteurs": skilled storytellers who fashion narrative spaces that allow themselves to remain sovereign and beyond subjugation. The book tells the stories of four Indian narrators who lived in colonial India: a Goan Catholic ayah, a Telugu lawyer from the Raju community, a Tamil brahmin archaeologist, and a librarian from the medara…