Description
Book SynopsisTrade Review"Shortlisted for the ASAP Book Prize, Association for the Arts of the Present"
"Winner of the First Book Prize, Modern Language Association"
"Saxena stretches out her net to bring in not just everyday Indians but all those assailed by a brutal state and needing a medium to express their pain."
---Peggy Mohan, The Wire"
The focus on a vast and understudied archive, nuanced textual readings, and sustained attention to the sensory modes of engaging with language allows [Vernacular English] to prise open the political and affective terrains of English in India.
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---Navaneetha Mokkil, South Asia"Saxena’s study of different domains toward the co-optation of English as an instrument of empowerment makes the concept of ‘Vernacular English’ a good alternative to the accepted mindset that English is a language of the elites in India."
---Soni Wadhwa, Asian Review of Books"One of the most fascinating studies on translation andextra-translational ways of perception. . . . Saxena succeeds to offer a relatively deeper and fresher view on theconstruction of the Anglophone that has lately become a homogenous term for global politics."
---Ayan Chakraborty, Journal of Comparative Literature and Aesthetics"A notable addition to existing historical, cultural, and literary scholarship that problematises the singularity of the English language and pays attention to the blurriness between the local and the global."
---Shwetha Chandrashekhar, South Asian History and Culture"
Vernacular English . . . is crucial scholarship in the continuing resilience of the perspectives afforded by researching postcoloniality beyond the strict space-time of historical colonialism"
---Saronik Bosu, Cambridge Journal of Postcolonial Inquiry
