A Clutch of Indian Masterpieces (Extraordinary Short Stories from the 19th Century to the Present)

A Clutch of Indian Masterpieces (Extraordinary Short Stories from the 19th Century to the Present)

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Book Specification

Item Code: NAM333
Author: David Davidar
Publisher: Aleph Book Company
Language: English
Edition: 2016
ISBN: 9789382277293
Pages: 541
Cover: Paperback
Other Details 9.5 inch x 6.5 inch
Weight 830 gm

Book Description

About the Book

The thirty-nine short stories in this book will blow you away. Starting with a ghost story by Rabindranath Tagore, India’s most famous writer, and ending with a fable by Kanishk Tharoor, a writer who has come of age in the twenty-first century, these literary masterpieces showcase the extraordinary range and diversity of our storytelling tradition. The first recognizably modern Indian short stories were written in Bengal (by Tagore and others) in the second half of the nineteenth century, and writers from other regions were quick to follow suit, often using the form to protest colonial oppression and the various ills afflicting rural and urban India. Over the next century and a half, some of the finest writers the world has seen produced outstanding fiction in every conceivable genre. Many of these stories find a place in this volume, as does work that has never been published in book form before. Here you will find stories of classical realism, others rooted in folklore and myth, tales of fantasy, humour, horror, crime, and romance, stories set in villages, small towns, cities and the moon. They will entertain you, and shock you, they will lighten your mood and cast you down, they will move you, and they will make you reflect on life’s big and little questions. Most of all, they will make you see the world differently –as the greatest stories always do.

About the Author

David Davidar is a novelist, publisher, editor and anthologist. He has been an attentive reader of Indian fiction for nearly forty years.

Contents

1 Rabindranath Tagore The Hunger of Stones 3
2 Munshi Premchand The Shroud 14
3 R. K. Narayan A Horse and Two Goats 21
4 Buddhadeva Bose A Life 36
5 Saadat Hasan Manto Toba Tek Singh 56
6 Thakazhi Sivasankara Pillai The Flood 63
7 Vaikom Muhammad Basheer The Blue Light 69
8 Gopinath Mohanty The Somersault 79
9 Khushwant Singh Portrait of a Lady 87
10 Ismat Chughtal Quilt 91
11 Amrita Pritam Stench of Kerosene 101
12 Anna Bhau Sathe Gold from the Grave 106
13 D. B. G. Tilak The Man Who Saw God 113
14 Harishankar Parsai Inspector Matadeen on the Moon 128
15 Mahasweta Devi Draupadi 138
16 Vijaydan Detha Countless Hitlers 150
17 Nirmal Verma Mirror of Illusion 160
18 Sundara Ramaswamy Reflowering 173
19 U. R. Ananthamurthy Mouni 182
20 Nisha Da Cunha Old Cypress 200
21 Ruskin Bond The Blue Umbrella 237
22 Gulzar Crossing the Ravi 254
23 Anita Desai Games at Twilight 258
24 Vilas Sarang A Revolt of the Gods 265
25 Ambai In a Forest, a Deer 276
26 Paul Zacharia Bhaskara Pattelar and My Life 282
27 Devanoora Mahadeva Tar Arrives 302
28 Irwin Allan Sealy Last In, First Out 309
29 Vikram Seth The Elephant and the Tragopan 322
30 Manjula Padmanabhan Feast 345
31 Githa Hariharan Nursing God's Countries 355
32 Cyrus Mistry Proposed for Condemnation 361
33 Shashi tharoor Trying to Discover India 371
34 Upamanyu Chatterjee Desolation, Lust 383
35 Vikram Chandra Kama 402
36 Anjum Hasan Wild Things 465
37 Amrita Narayanan Stolen 475
38 Shahnaz Bashir The Gravestone 486
39 Kanishk Tharoor Elephant at Sea 492
Acknowledgements 504
Notes to the Stories 506
Notes on the Authors 510
Notes on the Translators 514

Sample Pages






















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