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<p>In Roshani Chokshi’s Aru Shah novels (2018–22), a bestselling fantasy series published by Disney-Hyperion, the prototypical fantasy quest is remolded so that the protagonists—the Pandava “soul sisters,” middle-schoolers in Atlanta who also battle demons in a Hindu mythological Otherworld—do not encounter a new fantasy world so much as they develop new relationships with a familiar one. This article shows how <i>Aru Shah and the End of Time</i> (2018) uses the genre of fantasy to allegorize the emotional landscapes of Hindus growing up in the contemporary United States. Here the heroine’s discovery of her superpowers—a standard fantasy trope—is explicitly tied to a Hindu mythological world that is at once strange and familiar to her. Chokshi deploys the theme of language, particularly Aru’s muted ability to understand Indian languages, to deepen those dynamics of estrangement and familiarity. Ultimately Hindu knowledge is framed as subjective, emotional, and interpersonal.</p>

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“I Was Never a Tale, But the Truth”: Fantasy, Language, and Second-Generation American Hinduism in Roshani Chokshi’s Aru Shah and the End of Time

  • 期刊论文

  • 发表日期：

    2025年8月1日

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  • Nell Shapiro Hawley

摘要

In Roshani Chokshi’s Aru Shah novels (2018–22), a bestselling fantasy series published by Disney-Hyperion, the prototypical fantasy quest is remolded so that the protagonists—the Pandava “soul sisters,” middle-schoolers in Atlanta who also battle demons in a Hindu mythological Otherworld—do not encounter a new fantasy world so much as they develop new relationships with a familiar one. This article shows how Aru Shah and the End of Time (2018) uses the genre of fantasy to allegorize the emotional landscapes of Hindus growing up in the contemporary United States. Here the heroine’s discovery of her superpowers—a standard fantasy trope—is explicitly tied to a Hindu mythological world that is at once strange and familiar to her. Chokshi deploys the theme of language, particularly Aru’s muted ability to understand Indian languages, to deepen those dynamics of estrangement and familiarity. Ultimately Hindu knowledge is framed as subjective, emotional, and interpersonal.