This thesis will trace the undercurrent of nostalgia that exists in Anglophone literature about the city by examining the selected texts that betray a bittersweet attachment for the city and its bhadralok character despite the absence of what would be considered the traditional tropes for such nostalgia. The anxiety of identity, as it emerges from the study, is largely an issue with the middle class bhadralok group, hence the nostalgia in these texts is also an efflorescence of that group.
The aim of this study is not to make the novels stand in mute witness to the tide of history. Rather, the novels chosen for this study situate themselves within history and deploy the vehicle of nostalgia in order to respond to the anxieties of the urban present. The nostalgia for the city and its past exists coextensively with the anxieties and fears of a declining Bengali culture and identity, that is perceived to be in threat of being subsumed under a national identity. In this context, the importance of Calcutta/Kolkata as a site for nurturing Bengali middle class identity is crucial given its long encounter with the forces of colonialism that underpin Bengal’s own unique position within the national imagination.