The Book : First published in 1971, this study of the Indian Novel in English has remained a seminal book for the last three decades. This was the earliest work to apply rigorous standards of critical analysis to this new field of study and to situate the novels studied in their historical and social context. Written in an elegant and jargon-free language The Twice Born Fiction laid the foundations for future discourse in this field and anticipated some of the issues relating to nation, gender, power and identity that postcolonial theory was to take up subsequently. It is being reissued in the belief that the present-day reader would be interested in re-examining the paradigms that this books set up.

The Author : Meenakshi Mukherjee is the author of a Realism and Reality : Novel and Society in India (1995), Re-reading Jane Austen (1991) and The Perishabel Emprie (2000). Among volumes edited by her are considerations : Twelve Studies of Indian Writing in English (1977), Rajmohan's Wife (1994) and Rushdie's 'Midnight's Children' : A Book of Readings. She has co-edited Narrative : Forms and Transformations (1986), Another India (1990) and Interrogating Postcolonialism (1996). Her latest project, a study of history and fiction will be her first book written in Bangla and is due to appear later this year. Mukherjee has taught in several universities in India and abroad, the largest spell being at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi as Professor of English. At present she is an Honorary Professor, University of Hyderabad.