The book begins with a broad introduction situating the development of colonial law alongside the rise of the novel. The introduction offers an overview of the architecture of colonial sovereignty while also delving into its specifically legal context. From the move toward the codification of laws to the adjudication of cases in the Privy Council, the introduction reveals the ways in which the law provided a narrative for colonial lives. At the same time, the introduction shows how broader cultural narratives as represented in the era’s literature influenced the law. Even if, as is customarily claimed, the substance of law in the colonies was haphazard and drawn from multiple legal traditions, its authority was largely founded in claims to absolute sovereignty. The introduction frames the ways in which bloodline claims to the sovereignty of kingship were reconfigured in the colonies to enact a biopolitical sovereignty of race.

The afterword brings the various questions raised through colonial law and literature into the contemporary era. In it, I reflect on the book’s overarching argument and attempt to orient its conclusions toward the present and future. It is difficult, for example, to read the recent ruling by the Supreme Court undoing the prohibition of homosexuality in Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code as a predictable outcome of the structuring logic of colonial law. At the same time, it is equally unexpected as a consequence of contemporary Indian nationalism. Thinking about the unruly history of the “unnatural offence” that Section 377 seeks to prohibit helps reframe the legal narrative outside any teleological recourse to progress and tradition. In this vein, the afterword examines a range of flashpoints in contemporary Indian law in order to arrive at a broader understanding of the intersection of law and narrativity.