Abstract

Abstract: Nature comprises an important domain of literature. Reading systematically any text from the aspect of nature centered approach, is known as ecocriticism, a distinctive branch of literary criticism appearing since the late 1970s. Ecocriticism is a systematic and interdisciplinary study of the relationship between literature and environment with a view of spreading consciousness of the man-made environmental exploitation and damage for the greater sake of humanity. Ecocritics explore human attitudes toward the environment as expressed in text or writing on the natural world. Like the ecocritics, Kamala Markandaya (1924-2004) was greatly concerned with Nature as well as environmental damage. An ‘eco-conscious’ writer, Markandaya deals with the environmental issues in her maiden novel Nectar in a Sieve (1954) if looked from the lens of ecocriticism. The present paper attempts to examine Markandaya’s Nectar in a Sieve from the ecocritical perspectives and it aims at projecting how the novelist represents within the fictional canvas the interface between the human life and the natural world and how the environment is challenged and its aftermath on the rural life, and finally the author’s attitude towards the environmental loss on the wake of rural industrialization in modern India.