1-13

   In this way, through a series of successive exclusions,Mallabarman creates a space that will submit to thetechniques of a modern novel: the rest of the landscapeis pushed farther and farther into the background untilat last we have a setting that can carry a narrative. Thesetting becomes, in a sense, a self-contained ecosystem,with the river as the sustainer both of life and of the narrative....[epics] embraces the inconceivably large almost to the same degree that the novel shuns it. Novels, on the other hand, conjure up worlds that become real precisely because of their finitude and distinctiveness.”