Colonial and Post-Colonial Goan Literature in Portuguese: Woven Palms

This collection of essays brings together established scholars of Lusophone Goan literature from India, Brazil, Portugal and Great Britain. For the first time in English, this volume traces the key narrative works, authors and themes of this small but significant territory. Goa, a Portuguese colony between 1510 and 1961, was the site of a particular and particularly intense meeting of West and East. The problematic yet productive encounter between Europe and India that has characterised Goa’s history is a major theme in its literature, which affords important insights and material for postcolonial thought. Goan literature in Portuguese is the only significant Indian literature to have been written in a European language that is not English. As such, it provides a challenging point of comparison with anglophone Indian literature and a space to examine postcolonial theory often implicitly embedded in a British Indian colonial experience.