A Strange and Sublime Address was published to critical acclaim in 1991, winning both the Betty Trask Prize and the Commonwealth Writers Prize. The novella and nine short stories introduced Amit Chaudhuri’s distinctive and original voice, differentiating him from the postmodern, magical realist, fantastical style of other well known contemporary writers. As Chaudhuri describes in one of his recently collected essays, since the publication of Midnight’s Children in 1981, there has been “a particular idea of both the post-colonial novel and Indian writing in English, where the heterogeneity of the genre is glossed over” (115). Indian novels in English, he suggests, have become associated with lengthy “bustling post-colonial narratives” (114), assumed to provide a mimetic reflection of India’s national and social concerns. Moreover, amid such hegemonic assumptions, different literary forms and styles – including short...
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Citation: Bird, Emma . "A Strange and Sublime Address". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 23 December 2010 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=26542, accessed 09 June 2026.]
