The Contours of Metaphysics and Historiography in Namita Gokhale’s Things to Leave Behind

Abstract

Namita Gokhale’s novel Things to Leave Behind is considered to be the most ambitious work of the writer. Having been published in the second decade of the twenty-first century, the novel is set during the second half of eighteenth-century India, which was a part of the British Empire. The novel attempts to incorporate and express the nationalist fervour of the times which were known for their multiple mutinies and interplay of conflicts between imperialism and nationalism. The study intends to understand the contours of Historiography and Metaphysics in the novel. The first part of the study shall distinguish itself from justifying the novel as historiographic metafiction and provide a brief introduction to the aforementioned terms. The second part of the study shall provide a brief introduction to the novel. The third part of the study shall investigate the contours of multiple concepts in metaphysics and how they are involved in interplay with the novel. The fourth part of the study shall locate the metaphysical perspective of the novel historically. The fifth and final part of the study shall submit the findings.