Genre Strategies of a Historical Novel and a Detective Story in Abir Mukherjee's Work "A Man with a Great Future"

Menshchikova Mariya Doctor of Philology Professor of the Department of Foreign Literature, Leading Researcher of the Research laboratorary "The national cultural codes' study of the world literature in the context of intercultural communication", Institute of Philology and Journalism, Lobachevsky State University of Nizhni Novgorod 23 Gagarin Ave., Nizhny Novgorod, 603950, Russia menshikova4@yandex.ru

Koroleva Ol'ga PhD in Philology Cand. of Sciences (Philology), senior lecturer of the Department of Foreign Literature, Institute of Philology and Journalism, Lobachevsky State University of Nizhni Novgorod 23 Gagarin Ave., Nizhny Novgorod, 603950, Russia koroleva@flf.unn.ru

The most important component of modern British literature is the works of multiculturalist writers. The beginning of this process was laid by the collapse of the British Empire in the 1940s–1950s of the XX century, in connection with which "in the late 1970s–early 1980s, the formation of multiculturalism of British reality begins, now so distinguishing it from a number of European cultures" ^{[1, p.42]}. As a result, according to B. M. Proskurnin, postcolonialism and multiculturalism become one of the "semantic fields" that define the face of modern literature and the main highways of its development ^{[1, p. 39]}. The study of the literature of the postcolonial space includes many aspects, but, of course, not the last place belongs to the analysis of the genre typology of the multicultural novel, "the main question that arises when determining the essence of postcolonial literature is the philosophical context and genre form, since texts written by multicultural writers are very often directed against established power structures and turn into polyphonic and multilingual texts" ^[2]. The object of our research from the point of view of the implementation of strategies of historical and detective novels is the work of Abir Mukherjee "A Man with a great future". The concept of "genre strategy" was used by Yu. Lotman in the work devoted to the novel by W. Eco "The Name of the Rose"^{[3, p. 472]}, we also rely on the definition proposed by O. Y. Akhmanov, "genre strategy involves the author's appeal to genre tradition in order to actualize certain aspects of it, included by the author in the sphere of his interests in the context of his postmodernist quest" ^{[4, p. 192]}.

Abir Mukherjee (born 1974) is a British writer of Indian descent. The son of Bengalis who immigrated to the UK in the 1960s, Abir was born in 1974 in London, grew up in Scotland, and currently lives in London with his family. He wrote his first work at the age of forty, this was helped by his participation in the competition of writers of the detective genre, the organizers of which were looking for new authors who had not yet published their works. The initial chapter and a summary of the subsequent plot brought victory to Abir Mukherjee and the publication of his novel "A Man with a Great Future". The book was received with interest by readers and critics, receiving a number of awards: in 2017 — the Daggers Prize (Historical Dagger: an award for writing a historical detective story, awarded annually since 1960 by the Association of Authors of Detective Novels of the United Kingdom (Crime Writers' Association, CWA)), in 2020 — the European Detective Award, the book was also nominated for the Golden Dagger Award, and for the Edgar Poe Award. Events in the novel "A Man with a Great Future" ("A Rising man", 2017^[5], translated into Russian by M. Tsyurupa, 2020) developed in India in Calcutta in 1919. The author does not accidentally choose Calcutta as the place of action, his parents are from there, but, more importantly, it was a city founded by the British, which makes it, according to the writer, familiar and exotic, and also, from his point of view, it is the most beautiful city in India. The plot is connected with the arrival in Calcutta of Captain Sam Wyndham (Sam Wyndham), an Englishman, to start working in the Calcutta police. Soon he is called to the scene of the murder, the victim of which is a high-ranking official whose body was found in a poor neighborhood where white people do not enter, a note is found in the mouth of the murdered man demanding that the British leave India, otherwise new victims will follow. But gradually it turns out that the solution is not so simple, and perhaps this is not a political murder. Thus, the plot in the novel develops according to the traditional detective scheme with three main plot—forming elements: crime, investigation and solution: "The narrative vector is always directed from the "mystery" as an actor expressing loss (it can be not only murder, but also abduction, disappearance - everything that causes a situation of "ignorance", irrationality), to the "solution". Between them, the narrative course is built up as an investigation, a search, a solution" ^{[6, p. 206]}. As you know, in addition to such a traditional scheme for a detective, such a character as a detective is required, in classic versions acting in tandem with his assistant. In this case, it is an Englishman, Captain Sam Wyndham, who takes an Indian officer from the local police, Sergeant Banerjee, nicknamed Indestructible (Surrender-not), as his full name Surendranath was difficult to pronounce. Wyndham is an image of a lone detective, typical of the detective genre, a former military man who retired due to injury in the battles of the First World War, served in Scotland Yard, a widower, besides, periodically in difficult moments, an opium lover. It is interesting to pay attention to the choice of the author by the main character Sam Wyndham, on whose behalf the narrative is conducted.

Abir Mukherjee is an Indian by nationality, but was born in England and grew up in Scotland, and his detective is a white man, an Englishman, so the novel presents a synthetic point of view on the events taking place, because 1919 is the period of British rule in India, which constantly generates conflicts both local and more global. The writer himself, justifying the choice of such a hero, says that initially he could not write on behalf of an Indian, despite the fact that the Indian himself (in later books of the series, the narrative is conducted on behalf of the Indian captain's mate, Sergeant Banarji), he needed a different hero who could look at the situation in India at that time as if from the outside, from the perspective of a visiting white man. In addition, describing the two central characters, Abir Mukherjee notes that they are both just parts of his personality: "Sam, despite the fact that he is English, reflects mainly my cynical Scottish side, in terms of worldview... kind of depressive, ... and then Surendranath, who is actually more optimistic; he, like me, has Bengali roots. I wanted to look at that period through the eyes of these two men, so that the spectrum of what I saw was wider, not one-sided" ^[7]. Thus, the traditional pair of heroes, the detective and his assistant, perform in Mukherjee's novel not only their direct function — to solve a crime, but also an equally important task from the author's point of view — to show their perception and assessment, sometimes the opposite, of the events taking place in Calcutta at that time, due to British policy in India. Moreover, the very choice of the detective genre, according to the author, was dictated precisely by the opportunity to address social issues: "Despite the fact that detectives are a genre of fiction, they are a good way to explore social conditions. Using a detective novel to discuss social issues is in our blood. The detective is good because it is popular in all strata of society and, accordingly, is a good means of promoting ideas" ^[7]. In addition, in one of his interviews, Abir Mukherjee writes about the literary tradition on which he grew up, and paying tribute to the classic English detective Agatha Christie (Agatha Christie), still notes that for him the detectives of the Scottish writer William McIlvanney (William McIlvanney) with detective Laidlaw (Laidlaw), in which serious Attention was paid to the description of the social problems of Glasgow in the 1970s, as well as its followers Ian Rankin and Val McDermid ^[8].

A distinctive feature of the classic detective story is the moral idea embedded in it, or morality, which marks to varying degrees all the works of this genre, in the finale there is a punishment of the criminal and the triumph of justice. Considering the classic detective, for example, the works of Conan Doyle, and the modern detective, F. Inglis believes that the most important characteristic of the former is its orientation to high moral standards ^[9]. This law of the detective is also maintained by Abir Mukherjee, in the finale of the work, Captain Wyndham found a real criminal, this is a white policeman who committed murder by decree of the governor, covering up his criminal actions. Although initially the investigation is on a false trail, according to which the killer is an Indian, a member of a criminal terrorist organization, and, of course, this option is the most successful for the local white government, denigrating the local population and making a white person their victim. But it is Windham, an English policeman, who wants to find the truth and stands up for Benoy Sena, who is not guilty of this murder. Thus, the novel not only triumphs justice, and the true criminal is found, but focuses on political and social aspects, with an appeal to the life of India at the beginning of the twentieth century.

The detective investigation that formed the basis of the plot of the novel does not take place in modern India, the author is interested in another time, the beginning of the twentieth century, when India was still a colony of Britain. Interest in the historical past of their country is characteristic of multiculturalist writers, as E. A. Strukova notes: "One of the main themes of postcolonial and multicultural literature is history, which is understood by many modern writers as a kind of universal text that requires rethinking, and sometimes correction. Well-known historical events and plots receive a new design in the prose of multiculturist writers, due to postcolonial reality"^{[10, p. 175]}. As mentioned above, the choice of India and Calcutta as a place of action is not accidental, as is the choice of time. India in the historical perspective appears in the novel in two ways. On the one hand, it is shown as a country distinguished by exotic scenic beauty, for example, Wyndham and his assistant Banerjee see India like this while traveling along the Hooghly River: "This was the India of my dreams. The wild mysterious land described by Kipling and Sir Henry Cunningham. The morning mist floated over the land and enveloped the shores like a thin muslin, only torn here and there by an occasional banyan tree or a hut of local residents…On the eastern shore, the outlines of a huge temple could be seen through the haze... a number of smaller temples, twelve buildings in total, stood facing the main building, like students bowing before a mentor. Snow-white walls and blood-red roofs shone under the sun… Offerings to the goddess floated from the shore along the river – myriads of marigolds, rose petals and small lamps" ^{[11, p. 409]}. In this quote, attention should be paid to Wyndham's words that this was the India of his dreams. This is how the British imagined their Indian colony, which in reality looks completely different. And when referring to the author's history, the social aspect comes to the fore, which indicates that his novel fits into the mainstream of the English literary tradition, as V. G. Novikova rightly notes in his monograph "the dominant position in the evolution of the novel in English literature of Modern times is occupied by a socially problematic novel.... In the "postmodern" decades, British studies develop the ideas of multiculturalism, the coexistence of many iconic ideological systems, fix the variety of forms in literature, but retain a predominant interest in social content" ^{[12, pp. 111-112]}.

Building the historical discourse of his work, Abir Mukherjee gives an exact indication of the time of action, the events in the novel develop from Wednesday, April 9, 1919 to Tuesday, April 15, 1919, the dates are indicated at the beginning of the chapters. The main loci of the development of the action in the novel are no less clearly represented, it is no coincidence that the book is preceded by a map of Calcutta in 1919, which shows its division into Black and White cities, as well as the most significant places of the city with which the action of the novel is connected (Lal Bazaar, Choring Road, Kossipur, Fort William, etc.). The author he also uses such a characteristic technique for a historical novel as the introduction of real historical events and figures into the text of the novel, which influence the fate of fictional heroes. For example, in many ways, the events that actually took place in Amritsar, called the Amritsar Massacre, when a demonstration of civilians in Amritsar (Punjab, Northern India) was shot by the colonial troops of the British Empire on April 13, 1919, become pivotal for the disclosure of the crime by Wyndham. But it should be noted that for the author, the historical entourage and the appeal to historical facts are important not in themselves as an exotic background for a detective line, but for the disclosure of social and political issues. Abir Mukherjee does not just show the difference in the lives of the indigenous Indian population and white people, but touches on the most important problem of the coexistence of two cultures, two nations. It is no coincidence that a line from Kipling's short story "The City of Terrible Night" was chosen as the title of the novel: "Calcutta seems to be full of people with a great future" ^{[11, p. 7]}. The most important topic that Kipling touches on in his works is "the burden of the white man", that is, the question of the mission that the British carry out, bringing civilization to the colonies. This question, as well as the problem of India's existence under British rule, become the most important in Mukherjee's novel, and the answer to them is largely connected with Wyndham's reflections and his assessment of what is happening. From the very beginning of the work, he is not shown as an unconditional supporter of the policy of the empire, which is largely due to the events of the First World War, the battles on the side of Britain, in which he took part, and, nevertheless, upon arrival in Calcutta, he reflects like a Briton. But life in India leads him at first to ironic thoughts about the behavior of white people, their way of life, about their attitude towards Indians, for example, this can be seen from his description of the Bengali club for whites: "The club itself seemed to be a smaller version of Blenheim Palace, painted white and moved to the tropics, and served as an extraordinary example of how we embody our imperial fantasies in architecture. British India, where every Englishman has his own palace. The car stopped near a very impressive entrance…There was a wooden sign at the entrance, saying in flawless white letters: dogs and Indians are not allowed" ^{[11, p. 111]}. Later, Wyndham comes to understand how the system of power and justice is organized in India, reflecting on Sen's innocence and the charges against him, "Nothing directly connected Sen with the murder of McCauley, and not a single court would not have passed a guilty verdict based on our evidence ... Before coming to India, this could not have occurred to me Come, and now I offered to do just that. Because it was easier to sentence him than to prove his innocence. Because it would strengthen my position in the new position. Because the life of an Indian was worth less than the life of an Englishman" ^{[11, p. 279]}. And as a result, at the end of the novel, Wyndham, after the massacre in Amritsar, internally agrees with the accusations of his Indian assistant about the injustice of the British system towards Indians. Wyndham's thoughts are supported by other white heroes of the novel, for example, the merchant Byrne, who lives with Wyndham in the same boarding house and is ironic about the moral right of the British to rule the Indians, or Pastor Gunn, accusing the British of hypocrisy and using the riches of India: "The Lord in his wisdom gave us power over this shit…We have accepted this generous gift and are using it for our own unholy purposes. We have sucked all the juices out of this land and filled our chests. We have sinned against the Lord, because we did not serve Him, but Mammon, and we still have the audacity to lie to ourselves that we are defenders here, not parasites" ^{[11, p. 335]}.

Summing up, it can be noted that the originality and originality of Abir Mukherjee's novel "A Man with a great Future" are primarily due to the reception through the prism of multicultural literature of the strategies of the classic detective and historical novel. At first glance, the attention of the author and the reader is focused on the investigation of a crime, but using the formula of a classic detective story that is traditionally attractive to the mass reader, Abir Mukherjee turns to the analysis of the social problems of India at the beginning of the twentieth century, but with a projection on the issues relevant to the modern multicultural community — the coexistence of two cultures, equality of nations, the possibility of their acceptance and acculturation.