Indispensable for students of film studies, in this book Reena Dube
explores Satyajit Ray's films, and The Chess Players in particular, in
the context of discourses of labour in colonial and postcolonial
conditions. Starting from Daniel Defoe and moving through history, short
story and film to the present, Dube widens her analysis with comparisons
in which Indian films are situated alongside Hollywood and other films,
and interweaves historical and cultural debates within film theory. Her
book treats film as part of the larger cultural production of India and
provides a historical sense of the cross genre borrowings, traditions
and debates that have deeply influenced Indian cinema and its viewers.