Global Scrolls

Colonialism, Culture Clashes, and Why Chinua Achebe Had Every Right to Be Annoyed From ABS, Who Believes stories survive empires, but sarcasm survives history. It begins, as most tragic tales do, with someone arriving uninvited. Long before PowerPoint presentations and TED Talks about “cultural sensitivity,” colonial powers marched into Africa with swords, Bibles, and the […]

From Mistry to Martel, multiculturalism met narrative—and everything got delightfully complicated. By ABS, who believes that literary diversity is Canada’s quiet superpower (along with passive-aggressive weather). If the previous phase of CanLit was all about literary superstars and dystopian disasters, this one is about something quieter but more radical: the changing face of the narrator.

Welcome to the age of Margaret Atwood, Alice Munro, Michael Ondaatje, and a literary passport that finally got stamped. By ABS, who believes that Canadian fiction became globally relevant the moment it stopped apologizing in every sentence. It finally happened. Canada got loud. Well, not American loud. But definitely loud enough for the world to

Indigenous resistance, French-English tug-of-war, and the awkward teenage years of Canadian storytelling. By ABS, who believes that literature is the only polite place where Canada actually argues with itself. If Canadian literature were a person, this is the phase where it’d slam the bedroom door, declare it doesn’t want to be British or American, and

Tagore, Gandhi, Nehru, Sarojini Naidu, and the literary roots of India’s independence movement By ABS, The Literary Scholar, who believes that sometimes revolutions begin with a salt march, and sometimes with a sentence. Before Salman Rushdie made English magical, and long before Arundhati Roy made it Booker-worthy, a curious tribe of patriots, poets, philosophers, and

From Karnad to Amish, from Dattani to Sanghi—these writers made Indian English loud, layered, and wildly popular By ABS, The Literary Scholar, who believes that popularity isn’t a sin—and plot twists deserve literary respect too. Not all literature wants to be quoted in dusty journals. Some of it wants to be staged, sung, screen-adapted, or

Rushdie, Roy, Ghosh, and the Globalisation of Indian English Fiction By ABS, The Literary Scholar, who believes commas can cross continents, and novels can whisper louder than nationalism. There comes a moment in every literary tradition when someone turns around, tosses out the rules, and says, “Let’s make a mess.” For Indian English Literature, that

Kamala Markandaya, Anita Desai, Nayantara Sahgal, Bhabani Bhattacharya—and the tea-steeped fiction of postcolonial India By ABS, The Literary Scholar, who believes in women who penned silence into thunder and sewed metaphors into every sari fold. Before Indian fiction got drunk on postmodernism and magic realism, it went through a rather elegant, emotionally complex phase—where characters

From Kipling’s jungle to Forster’s caves, the British who wrote India—sometimes gloriously, often cluelessly, and always with a baggage allowance By ABS, The Literary Scholar, who believes the British wrote India like a misunderstood metaphor—and India replied with footnotes. Let’s begin with the granddaddy of them all: Rudyard Kipling You knew he was coming. You