Nissim Ezekiel turned seventy in 1994. This volume of critical essays on Indian literature commemorates this important landmark in the life of one of India’s most significant contemporary poets writing in English today. It was felt that this would be the most appropriate way of marking Ezekiel’s seventieth birthday. As an educator, editor, friend and guide, his has been a major influence on Indian Literature in English — from the 1950s till the present date.

The majority of the contributors to this volume have either been Ezekiel’s students or creative writers who have benefited from his razor-sharp comments on their poetry or fiction. Thus even though the essays in this volume cover a wide gamut of Indian Literature in English — from thematic overviews, to poetry, to fiction — they are all in the ultimate analysis tributes to Nissim Ezekiel.

These tributes map the charting of cultural territory by the postcolonial Indian writers in English. These writers, whether in India or in diaspora, speak with a confident voice which is no longer imitative of the British model or apologetic about writing in English. Their writings remap culture, repossess history, hybridise language, offer resistance to both the colonial past as well as postcolonial dominance, thereby providing a voice to the subaltern.