TY - GEN AU - Johnson, Alan TI - India's forests, real and imagined: writing the modern nation SN - 9780755634101 U1 - 634.909542 JOH PY - 2024/// CY - London PB - Bloomsbury Publishing KW - Epic Forests KW - Sacred Groves KW - Colonial Modernity KW - National Romance KW - Cosmopolitanism KW - Language Politics N2 - As they seek to explore evolving and conflicting ideas of nationhood and modernity, India's writers have often chosen forests as the dramatic setting for stories of national identity. India's Forests, Real and Imagined explores how these settings have been integral to India's sense of national consciousness. Alan Johnson demonstrates that modern writers have drawn on older Indian literary traditions of the forest as a place of exile, trial and danger to shape new ideas of India as a modern nation. The book casts new light on a wide range of modern writers, from Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay – widely regarded as the first Indian novelist – to contemporary authors such as Amitav Ghosh, Arundhati Roy, and Salman Rushdie as well as local attitudes to nationhood and the environment across the country. https://www.bloomsbury.com/in/indias-forests-real-and-imagined-9780755634118 ER -