The Holder of the World

The Holder of the World

First edition (US)
Author	Bharati Mukherjee
Language	English
Publisher	Alfred A. Knopf (US) Chatto and Windus (UK)
Publication date	September 1993
Publication place	United States
Media type	Print (hardback & paperback)
Pages	286 pp
ISBN	0-394-58846-0
OCLC	27641604
Dewey Decimal	813/.54 20
LC Class	PR9499.3.M77 H65 1993
Preceded by	Jasmine
Followed by	Leave It to Me

The Holder of the World, (1993) is a novel by Bharati Mukherjee. It is a retelling of Nathaniel Hawthorne's 1850 novel The Scarlet Letter, placing the story in two centuries (17th and 20th). The novel involves time travel via virtual reality, locating itself in 20th century Boston, 17th century Colonial America, and 17th century India during the spread of the British East India Company. It also references Thomas Pynchon's novel, V.. [1][2][3][4][5] The Holder of the World was among the contenders in a 2014 list by The Telegraph of the 10 all-time greatest Asian novels[6]

References

1. Maxey, Ruth (2019). "Mukherjee's 1990s Writing". Understanding Bharati Mukherjee. University of South Carolina Press. pp. 75–96. doi:10.2307/j.ctvgs0bhh.9. ISBN 9781643360003. JSTOR j.ctvgs0bhh.9. S2CID 240671860.
2. Appiah, K. Anthony (October 10, 1993). "Giving Up the Perfect Diamond". The New York Times.
3. Gornick, Vivian (1993). "Playing Games with History". The Women's Review of Books. 11 (3): 15. doi:10.2307/4021775. JSTOR 4021775.
4. Parameswaran, Uma (1994). "Reviewed work: The Holder of the World, Bharati Mukherjee". World Literature Today. 68 (3): 636–637. doi:10.2307/40150581. JSTOR 40150581.
5. Abair, Jacqueline M.; Cross, Alice (1999). "Patterns in American Literature". The English Journal. 88 (6): 83–87. doi:10.2307/822192. JSTOR 822192.
6. "10 best Asian novels of all time". The Telegraph. 2014-04-22. Retrieved 2020-12-06.

Further reading

• Luo, S. P. (2003). "Rewriting Travel: Ahdaf Soueif ’s The Map of Love and Bharati Mukherjee’s The Holder of the World." The Journal of Commonwealth Literature, 38 (2), 77–104.
• Srikanth, Rajini. The World Next Door: South Asian American Literature and the Idea of America. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2004: 187–192.

External links

• Holders of the Word:An Interview with Bharati Mukherjee
• Breaking the Borders of Gendered Space: Female Characters in Aritha van Herk's No Fixed Address and Bharati Mukherjee's The Holder of the World
• Reader's guide
• Powells book review
• A Selected Annotated Bibliography

Publication history

• Hardcover — ISBN 0-394-58846-0 (ISBN 978-0-394-58846-9), published in September 1993 by Alfred A. Knopf.
• Paperback — ISBN 0-449-90966-2 (ISBN 978-0-449-90966-9), published in September 1994 by Random House