Main description:

1. This volume critically engages with narratives that have dealt with pandemics/epidemics in the past and also in contemporary times to see how these texts present human life coming to terms with and trying to deal with all what pandemics/epidemics entail.
2. It ranges from Camus' The Plague, the writings of Pandita Ramabai, Mary Shelly, to Jack London, Lawrence Wright, and Christina Sweeney Baird, among others. The essays cover a wide spatio-temporal trajectory and make a substantial contribution to mapping the contours of the pandemic in terms of psychology, economics, society, politics and philosophy, thereby offering a variety of perspectives and disciplinarian trajectories.
3. It will be of interest to departments of English literature, social science, gender studies, cultural studies, psychology, society, politics, and philosophy across the US/UK. General readers too will find this exciting as it covers authors from across the world.

Contents:

List of Contributors

Introduction

Nishi Pulugurtha

I - Memory and Contagion

"Vernacular Realities" in Epidemic Literature: Reading Fakir Mohan Senapati's "Rebati" and Suryakant Tripathi Nirala's Kulli Bhaat
Sipra Mukherjee

The Trauma and the Triumph: Katherine Anne Porter's "Pale Horse, Pale Rider"
Tania Chakravertty

Pandemic and the Man-less Society: Problematizing Gender, Sex, and Sexuality in Christina Sweeney-Baird's The End of Men
Goutam Karmakar

II - Uncanny Dilemmas

The Decameron : Re-reading the Uncanny Riddle of Plague
Riti Agarwala

Mary Shelley's The Last Man: Dystopian Fiction and Pandemics
Sarottama Majumdar

Epidemic Anxiety and Narrative Aesthetics in Sarat Chandra's Palli Samaj and Pandit Mashay
Subham Dutta

Albert Camus' Rejoinder to the Absent God and the Absurdity of Existence in The Plague
Sacaria Joseph

III - Moving Between Language and Media

"It Mattered Not From Whence It Came; But All Agreed It Was Come . . . ": Plague Narratives as Narratives of Media and Foreignness
Amit R. Baishya

Forgotten Difference: The Plague in Hindi and Urdu Literature
Ishan Mehandru

The Periwig Maker and Defoe: A Deja vu Upon the Present
Sanghita Sanyal

IV - Fear, Disaster and Dystopia

Pestilence, Death, Fear and a Testimony of Female Outrage: The 1897 Bombay Plague in the Writing of Pandita Ramabai
Subarna Bhattacharya

Pandemic as a Disaster: Narratives of Suffering and "Risk" in Twilight in Delhi
Sumantra Baral

Pandemic Fear: Death and the Ruin of Civilization in Jack London's The Scarlet Plague
Paramita Dutta De

Pandemic and the End of the World in Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake
Sayan Aich Bhowmik

V - COVID-19, Public health and Social justice

Power and the Pandemic Through Two Gothic Tropes
Tabish Khair

Following the Dead: Digital Obituaries as Rituals of Selective Remembrance During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Yash Gupta

Index