The present paper tends to read Anita Desai’s The Village by the Sea (1982) through the lens of Erin James’ econarratological approach. The current study synthesizes contextual and cognitive narratologies to analyze the novel’s storyworld to highlight “focalization technique” and other key textual cues within the text that encourage readers to model and inhabit locally informed environmental experiences. Readers stand to experience this environmental imagination by employing the “immersive power” of Desai’s novel, and therefore they may lose track of time and feel that they are immersed in “alternative environmental imagination” of India predicated on an emerging national identity.
