Literature as History, between its two seemingly opposite spectrums, puts forth an idea of unusual convergence between the fields of literature and history. It begins by showing how literary material — since the Sangam period of Tamil literary Renaissance in the first millennium up to the very recent globally acclaimed Indo-Anglian literature — has reflected the twists and turns of history. Sometimes it highlights simply the life lived by the people in their everyday contentment and misery; sometimes it is the Sufiana tariqa (the Sufi way) of syncretic spiritualism (tassawuf), and sometimes it is the literary symbolism of nature trying to represent the nation. In this eclectic collection of essays, the one on Rabindranath Tagore’s seminal play The Red Oleanders documents the world’s great enthusiasm for the promised liberation of the weak and the oppressed from the shackles of industrial capitalism, while another on Tagore’s Letters from Russia explains the subsequent disillusionment and retreat from the first flush of hope and expectation. The three concluding essays in the volume, on Indo-Anglian literature and women’s writing, signal a new phase of history where the Indian diaspora has completed ‘the conquest of English’ and caused history to come full circle.