Reading the Animal in the Literature of the British Raj explores representations of animals during British rule in India-the tigers, elephants, boars, furs, and feathers that sometimes all but obscured the human beneath and behind them, and that were integral in the creation and maintenance of the hierarchies of colonialism. The book exists on two levels: one offers a sophisticated view of how power and oppression work within constellations of species, race, class, gender, and nationhood, and the other is a deeply suggestive meditation on our humanness and how we locate it within a spectrum of relations. Drawing on a range of texts including hunting narratives, stories, poetry, novels, photographs, journals, paintings, and cartoons, the argument builds with a lucid and beautifully unobtrusive feel for the telling example.
