A Clutch of Indian Masterpieces (Extraordinary Short Stories from the 19th Century to the Present)
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
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.
David Davidar is a novelist, publisher, editor and anthologist. He has been an attentive reader of Indian fiction for nearly forty years.
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 |