• sahitya-classes
• March 11, 2025
• 0 Comment

Hey! You are already revising for your CUET PG English exam. We think so! So many things to do. There are so many authors and works, literary concepts, theories, terms, and so on…a long list. Hmm…we know your anxiety and have tried to address stress-based issues in our previous blog. CUET PG English Admit Cards To Be Released Soon. You can read this blog on the official website of Sahitya Classes, the best coaching class for the CUET-PG English exam. Now, let us talk about the top 5 famous literary works and their authors in Asia, especially from the South-East region.

Join CUET PG English Online Classes– Enroll Now

Top 5 Southeast Asian Literature Authors

If you’re preparing for the CUET PG English exam, you must have come across the works of various authors from different parts of the world. However, in this blog, we would just discuss the most important authors belonging to the South-East Asian region. The list is non-exhaustive. So, use your discretion! Do not just completely rely on it. This is just one piece of information that requires discernment. So, are you ready?

1. Kamala Das

Kamala Das (1934 – 2009), the renowned Indian writer, wrote poetry and prose in both her mother tongue, Malayalam, and in English. She was also known as a confessional poetess. The poetry of Kamala Das has justly been labelled as confessional or feminist poetry, but it may, with equal justice, be labelled as the poetry of protest. The bulk of her poetry consists of her confessions with regard to the failure of her marriage, her vain search for love and affection by forming sexual relationships with other men, her giving free reins to her sensuality till love became a “swivel-door” with one lover going out of her bedroom and another coming in. Now, this confessional poetry is the poetry of protest in the sense that it conveys Kamala Das’s strong and vehement disapproval of the way in which women in India have been treated for ages and ages.

Born Kamala Surayya, she was also known by her pen name, Madhavikutty, though her widest recognition was achieved as Kamala Das, her married name. She was known in her home state of Kerala for her short stories and autobiography, and in the rest of India, for her English poetry.

Subsequent English-language works included the novel Alphabet of Lust (1976) and the short stories “A Doll for the Child Prostitute” (1977) and “Padmavati the Harlot” (1992). Notable among her many Malayalam works were the short-story collection Thanuppu (1967; “Cold”) and the memoir Balyakalasmaranakal (1987; “Memories of Childhood”). Perhaps her best-known work was an autobiography, which first appeared as a series of columns in the weekly Malayalanadu, then in Malayalam as Ente Katha (1973), and finally in English as My Story (1976). A shockingly intimate work, it came to be regarded as a classic. In later life Das said that parts of the book were fictional.

2. Chitra Fernando

Chitra Fernando was born in Kalutara South to Arthur Fernando, a practising lawyer in Kalutara and Olive Fernando in 1935. Her early schooling commenced at Balika Vidyalaya, Kalutara, subsequently in Bandarawela and finally at Visakha Vidyalaya where her mother, Olive Fernando, was the matron at the boarding school.

From Visakha she joined the University of Ceylon, Peradeniya, and graduated in 1959 with an Honours degree in English. She joined the academic staff of the University of Ceylon at Peradeniya as a Temporary Assistant Lecturer in the department of English in 1960. Winning a scholarship to the University of Sydney in 1961, she obtained an MA (Hons) degree for her thesis titled “A Constructive Study of English and Sinhala Grammar” in 1963.

Qualified as an MA degree holder, she returned to Sri Lanka and worked in the Department of Education, Sri Lanka until 1968. She was then appointed as a Lecturer in Linguistics at Macquarie University where she also started working on a doctoral thesis on the Nature and Function of Idiom in 1972. She completed her thesis in 1981.

In the meantime, she published five volumes of stories for Sri Lankan children in the “Taprobane Readers” series, under the pseudonym “Chitralekha”. The backdrop to all these stories is Sri Lanka. Some of her published articles are on attitudes and language in Ceylonese/Sri Lankan creative writing (1973), and on “English and Sinhala Bilingualism in Sri Lanka” (1976). She published Three Women (1984), Between Worlds (1988) and four other works of short fiction, and a monograph on Idiom in collaboration with Roger Flavell. She started writing her novel Cousins, in 1989 working simultaneously on the publication of her PhD thesis titled Idioms and Idiomacity.

3. Zulfikar Ghose

Zulfikar Ghose (born March 13, 1935, Sialkot, India [now Pakistan]—died June 30, 2022, Austin, Texas, U.S.) was a Pakistani American author of novels, poetry, and criticism on cultural alienation.

Ghose grew up a Muslim in Sialkot and in largely Hindu Bombay (Mumbai) and then moved with his family to England. He graduated from Keele (England) University in 1959 and married Helena de la Fontaine, an artist from Brazil (a country he later used as the setting for six of his novels). In 1969 he moved to the United States to teach at the University of Texas, from which he retired as professor emeritus in 2007. Ghose became a U.S. citizen in 2004.

Ghose’s first novel, The Contradictions (1966), explores the differences between Western and Eastern attitudes and ways of life. In The Murder of Aziz Khan (1967) a small farmer tries to save his traditional land from greedy developers. The trilogy The Incredible Brazilian—comprising The Native (1972), The Beautiful Empire (1975), and A Different World (1978)—presents the picaresque adventures, often violent or sexually perverse, of a man who goes through several reincarnations. Ghose’s other novels include Crump’s Terms (1975), Hulme’s Investigations into the Bogart Script (1981), A New History of Torments (1982), Don Bueno (1983), Figures of Enchantment (1986), The Triple Mirror of the Self (1992), and Shakespeare’s Mortal Knowledge: A Reading of the Tragedies (1993).

Join CUET PG English Online Classes– Enroll Now

4. James Goonewardene

James Goonewardene (1921–1997), a prominent Sri Lankan writer, holds a significant place in postcolonial and South Asian literature. His works often explore themes of social and political upheaval, identity, and the clash between tradition and modernity.

In the mid-1960s when James Goonewardene’s first novel, A Quiet Place was published by another bold and supportive pioneer, K.V.G. De Silva & Sons, English had already been thrown out with the bathwater in “literary Ceylon” (not yet Sri Lanka). As far as I can remember, only Punyakante Wijenaike had an edge on him with her first collection of published short stories.

But James’s was a full-length, if idyllic, novel and himself a truly flamboyant personality from the deep south, yet he had the courage to use the discarded language to write his book. James Goonawardene had many a “first” to his credit. Along with other stalwarts like Merle Williams, he kept the English Services of Radio Ceylon buzzing; also the popular “External Services” channel, even when those were on the brink of being closed down. His adaptations of the English classics in dramatic episodes were a popular series, much looked forward to. Creative scripts by other writers re-creating the ancient to modern history of the island for broadcast on the External Services were admirably produced by Merle and James between 1965 and the 1970s.

He was the first Sri Lankan novelist to have a novel published by Penguin – India in 1990. His novels and short stories won wide acclaim. Those were not days when awards were handed out for English writing nor was the “climate” conducive to conducting English Literary Festivals, even though the more far-sighted people of the country saw the need to attain literacy in this “universal language”.

5. Kamala Markandaya (1924–2004), one of the most celebrated Indian-English novelists, is known for her poignant portrayal of rural India, the clash between tradition and modernity, and the socio-political realities of a postcolonial world. Her first novel, Nectar in a Sieve (1954), an Indian peasant’s narrative of her difficult life, remains Markandaya’s most popular work. Her next book, Some Inner Fury (1955), is set in 1942 during the Indian struggle for independence. It portrays the troubled relationship between an educated Indian woman, whose brother is an anti-British terrorist, and a British civil servant who loves her. Marriage provides the setting for a conflict of values in A Silence of Desire (1960), in which a religious middle-class woman seeks medical treatment, without her husband’s knowledge, from a Hindu faith healer rather than from a doctor.

In Markandaya’s fiction, Western fiction and Western values are typically viewed as modern and materialistic and Indian values as traditional and spiritual. She examined this dichotomy in Possession (1963), in which an Indian shepherd-turned-artist is sent to England, where he is nearly destroyed by an aristocratic British woman. Later works by Markandaya include A Handful of Rice (1966), The Coffer Dams (1969), The Nowhere Man (1972), Two Virgins (1973), The Golden Honeycomb (1977), and Pleasure City (1982; also published as Shalimar).

Why is this important for the CUET-PG English exam?

CUET PG English syllabus includes postcolonial studies and South-East Asian authors. Therefore, you need to update yourself to understand the themes and other perspectives related to these particular topics.

If you are looking forward to getting admission in JNU or DU, you may consider joining the CUET online coaching for proper guidance and more strategic preparation. At Sahitya Classes, Prof. Vineet Pandey will organize rapid-fire quiz sessions for CUET-PG aspirants like you! Contact us to find out more.

If you want CUET PG English notes pdf, you can get in touch with our team at Sahitya Classes. You will get comprehensive literary theory notes pdf​. At Sahitya Classes, you will get expert guidance from an ex-Assistant Professor of University of Delhi, Prof. Vineet Pandey. When you enroll for online CUET-PG English classes with Sahitya Classes, be sure that you will get high quality video lectures by Prof. Pandey. Why consider Sahitya Classes? Your mentor has qualified the UGC-NET exam 11 times, SET 17 times, and JRF twice. He is well aware of the CUET-PG English exam syllabus and exam pattern quite well. Moreover, you will get proper CUET PG English literature notes and strategic preparation tips from the experts in their fields. What else do you need? Make up your mind and join Sahitya Classes.

Join CUET PG English Online Classes– Enroll Now

If you are interested in accessing the latest hardcopy and softcopy notes, course syllabus, previous years’ question papers, answer keys, crash courses, Google Drive Course, and wish to receive personal guidance from Prof. Vineet Pandey, please fill out the form!