SOURCE: Bahri, Deepika. “The Economy of Postcolonial Literature: Rohinton Mistry's Such a Long Journey.” In Native Intelligence: Aesthetics, Politics, and Postcolonial Literature, pp. 120-51. Minneapolis, Minn.: University of Minnesota Press, 2003.

In the following essay, Bahri examines Such a Long Journey and contends the strength of Mistry's writing comes from mixing native Indian dialects with the English of his primary reading audience.

No Realist contents himself with repeating forever what is already well known; that would not demonstrate a living relation with reality.

—Bertolt Brecht, Gesammelte Werke (translated by author)

In an otherwise complimentary review of Rohinton Mistry's Such a Long Journey (1991), Glenn Carey is chagrined to note a “serious flaw,” to wit, the lack of an “appendix of Hindi expressions used in the story, with English translations” (127). David Ray's review of the novel in the New York Times Book Review also draws attention to Mistry's use of various...