ABSTRACT:
Shashi Tharoor's The Great Indian Novel has been hailed worldwide as a masterpiece in post-modernism since its publication in 1989. Since the title itself induces us to see this work as "the new Mahabahratta", the presentation will tend to trace what Tharoor's novel owes to the double tradition of Indian and English literatures, from the epic itself to the more recent colonial and postcolonial fiction as well as History . Beyond this hybrid hypertext, the different techniques (echoes, palimpsests, transmutations…) enlisted for these borrowings play a complex role and work together in the global organisation of a powerful and exciting novel, and they will then be highlighted.
The "alchemy" of creativity gives these avatars of well -known forms a new life that relates in a completely original way to our understanding of the Indian cultural tradition from the mythical past to the twentieth century building of the nation, thus indeed creating a "new Mahabharatta" - the myth of India born from its anti-colonial struggle. If, according to Tharoor "the old is new again", it is reborn with a difference and the author's frequent streaks of irony and humour change the significance of the tropes in a more or less subversive way.
Our hope is to reach a better understanding of how the necessary complicity between narrator and audience, and between writer and reader, can thus have established more creatively through these techniques, and hence what creation entails for a writer using such techniques.
