Marketing Indian Chick Lit and the Contemporary Feminist Subject

Abstract

A new genre of women’s writing in English emerged in India in 2004 with Swati Kaushal’s
Piece of Cake. This genre of women’s contemporary popular fiction in English in India, dubbed
‘chick lit’ by the media, represents contemporary women and their social and professional lives
in metropolises like Delhi and Mumbai, and is marked by a racy style of writing and a
humorous, witty tone. While writers like Shobhaa De were writing popular fiction in English in
in India in the 1980s, this ‘popular’ or ‘commercial’ genre has seen an unprecedented spurt
since the publication of Swati Kaushal’s Piece of Cake and Chetan Bhagat’s Five Point
Someone (published the same year, i.e. 2004).