REWRITING TRADITION IN THE DIGITAL AGE- A NARRATIVE INNOVATION IN CONTEMPORARY SOUTH ASIAN FICTION

Abstract

This study is an attempt to relate traditional storytelling to digital narratives. The rise of digital culture in the twenty-first century has transformed the creative and interpretive landscapes of South Asian literature. Writers who once relied on oral traditions, regional mythologies, and print narratives now engage with interactive media, cyber discourse, and transnational digital spaces to reimagine storytelling. This paper explores how contemporary South Asian authors rewrite cultural traditions through digital aesthetics and narrative innovation. It examines the effect of digital consciousness reflected through fragmented narration, intertextuality, hypertextual forms, and multimedia influence. It reshapes the modes of representation in Indian English and broader South Asian fiction. The study deals Amitav Ghosh, Arundhati Roy, and Jhumpa Lahiri, whose novels demonstrate a convergence of cultural memory and technological mediation. The existing research works have focused more on the search for identity, migration, and self-exploration but this study solely focuses on the narratives in modern context in line with digital narratives. These authors fuse traditional narrative structures with experimental devices such as multiple, nonlinear sequencing, digital metaphor, and metafictional self-awareness. The research argues that digital narratives are not merely technological innovations but also acts of cultural rewriting, where inherited stories are recontextualized within the shifting semiotics of the digital age. By blending indigenous storytelling practices with globalized digital expression, South Asian fiction asserts its identity as both rooted and adaptive, redefining authorship, readership, and literary temporality in the digital milieu.