Beckett, Lacan, and the Mathematical Writing of the Real by Arka Chattopadhyay (review)

Abstract

806 of topics such as famine in British India. Anand’s novel Big Heart is shown to be an adaptation of Ernst Toller’s German Expressionist play, Die Maschinenstürmer [The Machine-Wreckers], with multiple scenes and characters in Big Heart referencing the earlier play. In tracing the ways Toller’s works also draw from a wide variety of sources, Morse argues that “Anand’s and Toller’s catholic and widespread borrowings suggest a vast international network of appropriation and cooperation” (147). This analysis of Anand as “an imaginative arranger” provides a fresh perspective on Anand’s literary production and relationship with radio in this period (118). Radio Empire demonstrates the BBC’s Eastern Service’s importance within radio and literary history while bringing welcome attention to little known texts and rethinking existing critical understandings. Morse’s compelling account of the intermedial relationship between radio and the novel in the mid-twentieth century is a valuable contribution to scholarship of literary radio, modernism, and postcolonial studies.