Focusing on English-language texts written by Bengali historians on the subjects of literature and culture, Schwarz critically analyzes landmark works of the genre and compares Indian writing about cultural heritage to the dominant forms of European historiography prevalent during the colonial period.

Indian historians incorporated European aesthetic standards and theories of history into their writing, yet they managed to transform these ideas in ways that challenged British ideological domination. Schwarz shows how, in writing a distinctly Indian history of India, they produced a unique historiographical style of great complexity, deploying brilliant reconfigurations of the dominant themes, styles, ideologies, and tropes that characterize acceptable modes of history writings in the West.

Moving from the late nineteenth century to the present, Schwarz identifies six distinct modes of translation and transformation produced by these writers, ranging from liberal-nationalist texts to those of writers associated with the Subaltern Studies project. He analyzes the narrative modes employed during the period and traces their movement toward the metaphoric and ironic styles of the post-Independence era.