Continuing with our list of women writers who redefined the narrative, we have here another 10 who not only add to the list but are very much a part of the groundbreaking legacy.

Sylvia Plath took ahead the confessional genre of poetry. Her Collected Poems published in 1981 received the Pulitzer Prize posthumously. Shortly before her suicide, The Bell Jar was published in 1963. Her poems are raw and hit a personal note with the readers. Exploring human emotions further, her treatment of sensitive subjects like mental illness is worthy of praise.

Anita Desai in ‘Fasting and Feasting’ represents cultural conflict much like Jhumpa Lahiri. Shortlisted thrice for the Booker Prize, Clear Light of Day is the most autobiographical of her works. She also won the Sahitya Akademi Award for Fire on the Mountain. (1978)

Arundhati Roy has been mired in political conflicts lately. But her Booker Prize winner ‘The God of Small Things’ breathed a fresh life into the corpus of Indian writing in English. Her treatment of social and political themes is bold and contemporary.

Sashi Deshpande won the Sahitya Akademi Award in 1990 for That Long Silence. Born in Karnataka, she joined in the protest against the silence of Government bodies on the death of M.M. Kalburgi. Shadow Play was shortlisted for The Hindu Literary Prize in 2014. Critiquing the lives of Indian women in dismal, mundane spaces, she depicts the ordeals of nondescript women.

Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni is known for intertwining mythology into fiction. Following the tradition of magic realism, perhaps, introduced into Indian writing in English by Salman Rushdie, she rewrites stories from a feminist perspective. ‘The Palace of Illusions’ offers readers a fresh take into mythology hitherto unwitnessed owing to a lack of reimagination.

Kiran Desai is one of the 20 most influential women according to The Economic Times in 2015. Winner of the 2006 Man Booker Prize for The Inheritance of Loss, Kiran, like her mother Anita Desai, deals with themes that are particularly Indian. Cultural clash, identity crisis, displacement, colonialism, and others are central to her works.

Elif Shafak is a Turkish-British author. Her works like ‘The Bastard of Istanbul’ are popular among the readers for their intensely personal human experience. Richness is discernible when the themes are explored to navigate the identity at the intersection of Eastern and Western cultural differences.

Anuja Chauhan has several feathers on her hat. A marketing genius, her sparkling wit finds a glowing display at The Zoya Factor. The Indianness of her writing is credited to her fresh take on contemporary themes. With romance and humour in equal parts, she achieved what Chetan Bhagat had set out to do with Two States.

Anita Nair received the Kerala Sahitya Award in 2012 for her contribution to literature and culture. Transcending boundaries and language barriers, she bore the themes of women's identity to new heights of humour and insight. Ladies Coupe and The Better Man are widely appreciated for women-centric themes.

Elizabeth Gilbert’s ‘Eat, Pray, Love’ is, perhaps, the only work that has a woman who sets out to explore herself. A self-searching travelogue to make peace with her past while shaping the person one has set out to become, Gilbert touched a raw nerve of cosmopolitans enmeshed in the blurry rush to pause and reflect.

Thus, these ten names are not absolute, but a stepping stone to marking the beginning of voices that are going to grow more confident and stronger in the times to come.

source: britishguildoftouristguides