Winner of the 2025 René Wellek Prize for Best Edited Collection, given by the American Comparative Literature Association! Read full citation here.

The Oxford Handbook of Modern Indian Literatures (Oxford University Press, 2024) is an expansive projected co-edited by Ulka Anjaria and Anjali Nerlekar. Throughout its 43 chapters, the book demonstrates the range of methodological and theoretical approaches to the study of Indian literature across languages and genres. While the field of modern Indian literary criticism is immensely rich, it has been divided by language, and the study of regional language literatures has largely been separated from the study of Indian writing in English and postcolonial theory. Thus, although Indian literature has become globally recognized in recent decades, with authors such as Salman Rushdie, Arundhati Roy and Aravind Adiga winning the Booker and other prestigious literary prizes, these works and successes have been seen largely apart from the depth and breadth of India’s multiple literary traditions. The sheer number of languages and the privileging of linguistic expertise rather than comparative approaches has led to a dearth of books that span literary traditions. The Oxford Handbook of Modern Indian Literatures fills this significant gap.