The book aims at an evaluation of the novels of Kamala Markandaya in the perspective of class-consciousness embedded in her fictional narrative. The study attempts to explore the impact of class-consciousness on the attitudes, manners and conditions of living in the context of modern India as it moves from a conservative and traditional social order to a liberal and urbanised socio-economic and cultural ethos. It seeks to explore Markandaya’s concern with the predicament of the individual in a class-ridden society subjected to a process of radical change. An attempt has been made to substantiate the hypothesis that in the process of this change, the self confronts tensions, uncertainties and conflicts that lead to deep psychological and spiritual wounds. The self, with its desires, instincts and dreams, encounters a world of reality governed by social, economic and cultural forces. This encounter leads to a crisis of identity. The self tries to surmount this crisis through resistance or reconciliation, through protest or surrender. In this process of self’s grappling with reality, there is anguish and suffering. This study, in short, is an attempt to exploring the paradox of human condition in terms of conflict between self and society, between free will and necessity.

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