Acknowledgments

This book emerges from almost a decade of work made possible by countless conversations, exchange of drafts, and written feedback, writing groups, conferences, research and travel grants, consultations in various libraries and archives, support from institutions, and continual encouragement, faith, and care from mentors, friends, and family. First, I must thank the series editors, Debjani Ganguly and Francesca Orsini, for their enthusiastic support for my book and their guidance through the process of review and revision. Their work in the fields of world literature, South Asia, and Indian Ocean studies has been foundational for this book, and I am thrilled to have their endorsement and publish my first book in this series. I am also grateful to the two anonymous reviewers for their thoughtful and thorough engagement with the manuscript. Their feedback was tremendously helpful for clarifying the conceptual interventions of the book and strengthening its central arguments. I owe much thanks to Ray Ryan and his editorial team at Cambridge University Press for believing in this project and helping me navigate the publication process. I am grateful for Sandra Kerka’s thorough and careful copyediting. And deepest gratitude to Malala Andrialavidrazana who generously allowed me to feature her stunning artwork as the book’s front cover. It is an honor to have her vision represent this work.

This book’s journey began in a graduate seminar at Northwestern University, where Professor Evan Mwangi introduced me to the idea of Indian Ocean literature and opened a whole new perspective for looking at literatures from South Asia and Africa beyond the lens of postcolonialism. With a lot of faith and generosity, Evan agreed to be my dissertation advisor when I switched my field from modernism to Indian Ocean studies. This book would not exist without him. I am also grateful for the feedback and support from my dissertation committee members Susannah Gottlieb, Nasrin Qader, and Dilip Gaonkar, which were critical in shaping the early stages of this project. My conversations with them always left me challenged and energized. Special thanks to Susannah for helping me become a better writer. Harris Feinsod was an important mentor and interlocutor as I developed my project. The conversations in his graduate seminar and interdisciplinary colloquiums introduced me to models for transnational comparison across geographies and languages. Thanks to Christopher Bush, I had the opportunity to work with the editorial team for Modernism/modernity, which opened for me many new possibilities for studying literature, in ways beyond what I had imagined possible in graduate school. I am grateful for the mentorship and support of many other faculty members at Northwestern, including Samuel Weber, Christine Froula, Clare Cavanaugh, Penelope Deutscher, Alicia Riccardi, Michelle Wright, and Laura Brueck. Comparative Literary Studies Program coordinators Tara Sadera and Sarah Elizabeth Peters provided essential support for the intellectual community that nurtured the ideas in this book. My fellow graduate students at Northwestern created a thinking and learning community and brought care, joy, and solidarity to this work that sometimes can feel solitary. I am especially grateful to Maïté Marciano, Maziyar Faridi, Taymaz Pour Mohammed, Arif Camoglu, Azadeh Safaeian, Niloofar Sarlati, Scott Newman, Mlondi Zondi, Delali Kumavie, and Tyrone Palmer, for their support as friends and interlocutors.

I was incredibly lucky to be welcomed back to my alma mater, Reed College, as a faculty member. I am grateful to my fantastic colleagues for providing a supportive environment while I worked on this book. I am specifically indebted to Laura Leibman, who modeled how to balance scholarship and teaching in a teaching-intensive institution. Nathalia King read drafts of the Introduction and helped me achieve clarity and precision in my writing, as she had done years ago as my undergraduate thesis advisor. Nathalia, you laid the foundation for everything I have achieved. For that I am eternally grateful. Big thanks to Radhika Natarajan for convening numerous writing groups with Christienna Fryer, Shivani Sud, and Alice Hu, which helped me keep going with my writing even during the busiest time of the semester. Exchanging drafts in these meetings guided me through the final stages of the book.

Several grants and fellowships provided support for research and writing. I am grateful to the Dean of the Faculty at Reed for the Stillman-Drake grants and the sabbatical fellowship, which released me from teaching for the fall of 2022 to work on the book. I would also like to thank the National Endowment for the Humanities for supporting my work over the summer of 2021. At Northwestern University, the Buffet Institute of Global Studies funded research trips to Dar es Salaam, Zanzibar, and Paris in 2016 and 2017. Northwestern’s Presidential fellowship provided two years of graduate funding to work on the dissertation on which this book is based.

The work on this book would not have been possible without the support of the libraries and librarians across different institutions. As a graduate student, I benefited greatly from the proximity to the Melville J. Herskovits Library of African Studies at Northwestern. I am grateful to Esmeralda Kale, Gene Kannenberg, and their team at the Herskovits Library for maintaining the collection and making the space welcoming and accessible. The East Africana Collection at the University of Dar es Salaam also enriched the project. The Reed College library has provided indispensable support during the past five years. Special thanks to Tom Willingham for magically bringing materials from libraries and archives around the world. And I am grateful to Tony Moreno for his help with the images.

The “Dissertation-to-Book” workshop organized by the American Institute of Indian Studies gave me the confidence to reimagine this project as a book. I would like to thank the mentors Harleen Singh and Jyoti Puri and the members of my group – Padma Chirumamilla, Sravanthi Kollu, Ameera Nimjee, Swapnil Rai, Jeff Roy, Sreyoshi Sarkar, and Darshana Mini – whose suggestions helped move the project forward. Pushpa Acharya organized several conference panels and symposiums where I had the opportunity to present the ideas developed in this book. I am deeply grateful for his friendship and for his role as an insightful interlocutor. I owe immense gratitude to Sara Appel at Incandescent Editing for helping me consolidate the book’s vision and refine my writing. Sara read multiple drafts of the chapters and provided valuable feedback that shaped the book. Michael Allan has been a generous mentor and friend. I am thankful to have his encouragement and support during the final stretch. Thinking aloud with Michael, Akshya, Daniel, and Sunayani has been a great source of enrichment while working on the book. At Reed, I have been incredibly lucky to have very engaged and thoughtful students. I would specifically like to thank the students in my “Memory and Modernity in the Indian Ocean” course. Their keen observations made me see the texts anew each time I taught them and left an imprint on the arguments of this book.

Parts of Chapter 1 appeared in “Fugitive Archives: Translation, Sea and History in Indian Ocean Fiction” in Comparative Literature’s special issue on Indian Ocean Circularities, 74, no. 2 (2022). I am grateful to Françoise Lionnet and Firat Oruç, the special issue editors, for their feedback that benefited the chapter. Chapter 3 expands on the article “The Home and the World: Queering Diaspora and Recasting the Nation in Ananda Devi’s Indian Tango” published in South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies 26, no. 5 (copyright 2023 South Asian Studies Association of Australia). I would like to thank Duke University Press and the South Asian Studies Association of Australia for their permission to publish this material in the book.

My deepest gratitude goes to my family for their unwavering support. My parents, Tilak Mohan Bhandari and Sharmila Shrestha, and my brother, Yaju Rajbhandari, always had my back, even from the far side of the world. I have been blessed with the most loving grandparents, Krishna Das Rajbhandari and Chandra Kesari Rajbhandari, and the most caring fufu, Laxmishwori Bariya, Chandeshwori Shrestha, Amleshwori Shrestha, Dibyashwori Rajbhandari, Renuka Pradhan, and Rema Madhikarmi. I am thankful to have the love and support of my family in the United States: Duane and Gisele Harris, Kelly Williams, and Robin Baker. Thank you for welcoming me and making me feel at home. I would like to express my heartfelt gratitude to my friends, Yagyesh Dhwoj Karki, Swarup Paudel, Binam Shakya, Anup Khanal, Jubin Shakya, and Abiral Adhikari. Our shared memories and laughter have been a constant source of joy. Finally, I would not have been able to finish the book without the love, strength, and encouragement of my wife, Brandie. Thank you for being my anchor, the source of my calm during storms, and for cheering me on through triumphs big and small. I am endlessly grateful to share my life with you. This book I dedicate to you and our fur-child Moana.