South African Indian Literature in a World Literature Context: An Interview with Prabashini Moodley

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Acknowledgments

David Moore offers substantial thanks to Elizabeth Salvatore, Nicole Littell, Cassandra Veach, and Kaija Bergen for assistance in preparing this manuscript.

Notes

¹ Though it will not be possible in this short space to survey Indian South African literature, it is important to note that this body of writing is small, relatively young, and rapidly expanding. A fine focused study can be found in Rastogi, Afrindian Fictions—a book which also includes a 2005 interview with Praba Moodley. A rich survey and analysis of South African Indian women's writing is Govinden, Sister Outsiders, and a broad overview of the relations (literary and otherwise) between Africa and India is found in the characteristically superb edited volume by Hawley (India in Africa). An important recent history of the “global” Indian Ocean has been published by Bose (A Hundred Horizons) while the little-known interconnections between India and African America have been robustly traced by Horne (The End of Empires).

² The groundbreaking and influential Indian Opinion, founded by Mohandas K. Gandhi, was published from 1903 to 1961 in Durban, and appeared in Gujarati, Hindi, Tamil, and English.

³ In conversation after our formal interview ended, Praba Moodley gave me a list of other authors and titles she admired. These are listed separately at the end of this interview.

⁴ Interestingly, Erskine's father's family had served in India, in the East India Company and in the Indian Army, for some two hundred years.

⁵ This reader profile is discussed at length in Janice Radway's classic of literary sociology Reading the Romance.

⁶ The Kwela publicity materials for Follow Your Heart feature the many-part family narrative, and note that the novel is a sequel to The Heart Know No Colour. Kwela offers bookshops three key “selling points,” as follows: “1.) Extremely readable and a worthy sequel to the much loved The Heart Knows No Colour, which appeared in 2003. 2.) Superb historic romantic saga filled with much colourful description, rich atmospheric detail, warm family interactions, high drama, just enough scandal, and engaging characters: it is exotic, sumptuous, sensual and full of period detail. 3.) Compelling and accessible, it is sure to appeal to all lovers of romantic fiction, and above all the many fans Praba already has.”