The Retrospective Raj Medicine, Literature and History After Empire

The book argues that during this crucial period of recent history, when the influence and prestige of the British Empire was nearing its end, a range of contemporary novelists including J. G. Farrell, Paul Scott, John Masters, Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, and Salman Rushdie identified and used medicine as a discursive paradigm through which to engage critically with the history, authority and legacy of the British Empire within their writing.
Drawing on a range of literary and archival sources, this work explores the complex relationship between Britain, India and Empire through a medical lens, bringing together the concerns of literary study and medical history under an interdisciplinary and original methodological framework.