<P> Shashi Tharoor, in his The Great Indian Novel (1989), follows a story - telling (though in a satirical) mode as in the Mahabharata drawing his ideas by going back and forth in time . His work as UN official living outside India has given him a vantage point that helps construct an objective Indianness . Vikram Chandra is another author who shuffles between India and the United States and has received critical acclaim for his first novel Red Earth and Pouring Rain (1995) and collection of short stories Love and Longing in Bombay (1997). His namesake Vikram A. Chandra is a renowned journalist and the author of The Srinagar Conspiracy (2000). Suketu Mehta is another writer currently based in the United States who authored Maximum City (2004), an autobiographical account of his experiences in the city of Mumbai . In 2008, Arvind Adiga received the Man Booker Prize for his debut novel The White Tiger . </P> <P> Recent writers in India such as Arundhati Roy and David Davidar show a direction towards contextuality and rootedness in their works . Arundhati Roy, a trained architect and the 1997 Booker prize winner for her The God of Small Things, calls herself a "home grown" writer . Her award winning book is set in the immensely physical landscape of Kerala . Davidar sets his The House of Blue Mangoes in Southern Tamil Nadu . In both the books, geography and politics are integral to the narrative . In his novel Lament of Mohini (2000), Shreekumar Varma touches upon the unique matriarchal system and the sammandham system of marriage as he writes about the Namboodiris and the aristocrats of Kerala . Similarly, Arnab Jan Deka, a trained engineer and jurist, writes about both physical and ethereal existentialism on the banks of the mighty river Brahmaputra, and his co-authored book of poetry with British poet - novelist Tess Joyce appropriately titled A Stanza of Sunlight on the Banks of Brahmaputra (1983) published from both India and Britain (2009) which is set under this backdrop evokes the spirit of flowing nature of life . His most recent book Brahmaputra and Beyond: Linking Assam to the World (2015) made a conscious effort to connect to a world divided by racial, geographic, linguistic, cultural and political prejudices . His highly acclaimed short story collection The Mexican Sweetheart & other stories (2002) was another landmark book of this genre . Jahnavi Barua, a Bangalore based author from Assam has set her critically acclaimed collection of short stories Next Door on the social scenario in Assam with insurgency as the background . </P> <P> The stories and novels of Ratan Lal Basu reflect the conditions of tribal people and hill people of West Bengal and the adjacent states of Sikkim, Bhutan and Nepal . Many of his short stories reflect the political turmoil of West Bengal since the Naxalite movement of the 1970s . Many of his stories like' Blue Are the Far Off Mountains',' The First Rain' and' the Magic Marble' glorify purity of love . His novel' Oraon and the Divine Tree' is the story of a tribal and his love for an age old tree . In Hemingway style language the author takes the reader into the dreamland of nature and people who are inexorably associated with nature . </P> <P> One of the key issues raised in this context is the superiority / inferiority of IWE (Indian Writing in English) as opposed to the literary production in the various languages of India . Key polar concepts bandied in this context are superficial / authentic, imitative / creative, shallow / deep, critical / uncritical, elitist / parochial and so on . </P>

Origin and development of indian writing in english