The World in Words

This book is a definitive academic reference on the history of travel writing in colonial and postcolonial South Asia. This interdisciplinary study approaches the genre from both historical and literary perspectives. It is written in an informed but accessible style intended for both academic and informed lay-readers.

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Based on over a decade of original archival research, this book shows how Urdu travel writing gave voice to a global imagination that reflected the ambition and aspiration of Indians and Pakistanis as they negotiated their place in the changing world of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In this interdisciplinary study, author Daniel Majchrowicz traces the social and literary history of the Urdu travelogue from 1840 to 1990 in six chronological chapters. Each chapter asks how travel writers used the genre to give meaning to the shifting social and political realities of their colonial and postcolonial worlds. The book particularly highlights the role of women writers in the production of a global imagination in Urdu with an emphasis on travel writing on Asia and Africa.