Studies in Contemporary Indian-English Short Stories (An Old & Rare Book)

This compilation of critical essays constitutes a comprehensive and an up to-date investigation into the origin, growth and expansion of contemporary Indian Short Story in English, which is commonly regarded as a leisurely offshoot of contemporary Indian Fiction in English. Though the genre has its deep roots in Indian lore and literature, as may be seen in Panchatantra and Kathasaritasagar, it has not received adequate critical attention so far. The present collection will fill in this gap to a great extent. Divided into two sections, it brings into limelight a hitherto comparatively, unexplored area. The first section focuses attention on the genre itself and the second deals with individual writers like Mulk Raj Anand, R.K. Narayan, Raja Rao, Manohar Malgonkar, Khushwant Singh, Ruth Prawar Jhabvala, Anita Desai, Arun Joshi, Manoj Das, and a few others. Most of the contributors to this compilation are seasoned professors of English in Indian and foreign universities, and have accomplished their assigned task competently.. A biblio graphy of the works of short story writers has been given at the end of the volume to make it useful for scholars and researchers. In its present shape and size, it is hoped, this collection will have wide appeal.

Born in 1943 and educated at the University of Allahabad, Amar Nath Dwivedi has been teaching graduate and post graduate classes since 1965, presently at the University of Allahabad, where he is a Reader in English. A recipient of State Bursary for four years (1961-65), he was awarded Teachers' Research Grant by the ASRC (Hyderabad) in 1972 and Ph.D. in 1975 on his dissertation "Indian Thought and Tradition in T.S. Eliot's Poetry", which was later published in both India and Austria with a Foreword by Prof. Grover Smith of the Duke University, U.S.A. Dr. Dwivedi has published about a dozen books and fifty-five research papers and articles. His articles and papers have appeared in such prestigious jour nals and periodicals as WLWE (U.S.A.), Explicator (U.S.A.), JSAL (U.S.A.), Re views Journal (Austr.), The Aryan Path, Indian Literature, and The Banasthali Patrika. His translations of Hindi poetry have appeared in Voices of Emergency (edited by Prof. John O. Perry, 1982) and in The Poetry of R.L. Khandelwal "Tarun' (1991). Dr. Dwivedi is listed in the International Who's Who ("Men of Achieve ment" and "Register of Intellectuals") of Cambridge, U.K., in the Book of Honor published by the A.B.I., Inc., Raleigh, North Carolina, U.S.A. and in the International Who's Who of Contemporary Achievement of Cambridgeshire, Eng land. He has participated in a number of national seminars and conferences, and has delivered talks and recited poems over the A.I.R. He is on the board of ad visers for the literary journals, New Liter ary Horizons and Canopy.

The post-Independence literary scenario of India has un furled new dimensions and possibilities, bringing to the fore several talented and promising writers. One of the curious contrarieties of contemporary India is the emergence of English language and literature with greater vigour and force against the drift of time. People, at least some of them, had hoped that English would go along with their rulers. But that was not to be! On the contrary, Indian writing in English, particularly Fiction and Poetry, has considerably flourished during the past few decades. Though Indian-English Short Story has not been so fortunate as her elder sister Indian-English Fiction, she has her own share of luck and fate. One thing must, however, be ad mitted that Indian-English Short Story has been a neglected genre right from the beginning despite the presence of the 'Big Three' and Manjeri Isvaran on the scene. This situation is some what inexplicable because there has been a rich tradition of story-telling in India by way of oral transmission as well as in writing as witnessed in Panchatantra, Jatakas and Kathasarit sagar. If Indian fiction in English came into being in the 1930s, Indian-English Short Story can't be dated earlier than this. In fact, the latter has had a chequered career and has passed through the vicissitudes of fortune. Most of its practitioners have taken to it in their leisurely hours just to relax themselves from the tensions of a serious pursuit. Many of the writers included in this collection were incidentally drawn to it in this way,-for instance, Anita Desai, Arun Joshi, Bhabani Bhattacharya, Chaman Nahal, K.N. Daruwalla, Margaret Chatterjee, and Sas thi Brata (as well as Shiv K. Kumar who does not figure here). Others are undoubtedly attracted towards it with a sense of at tachment and dedication,-for example, Manjeri Isvaran (whom I wanted to include herein, but no suitable contributor could be found alas!), the 'Big Three', Manoj Das, Khushwant Singh, Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, etc. How neglected a branch of literature the Short Story has been may be guessed from the fact that no scholar or critic, but for Dr. C. Venugopal, has ever ventured to highlight it! Strange, isn't it? And hence I took upon myself the responsibility of coming out with a comprehensive critical book of this nature for the benefit of scholars and researchers in the area. I'm sure, the present edited work fills up a vacuum, a void in the critical world of Indian-English literature. Out of a total of some seventeen papers and articles collected herein, two deal with the origin, growth and expansion of the Short Story while fifteen others throw light on individual writers. As these papers and articles come from different hands, their quality though not questionable is bound to be diverse in nature. My sincere effort as an editor has been to strike a note of balance and harmony amongst them by weeding out the irritants with regard to grammar, syntax and language and by taking footnotes and references to the end of each paper. I have also tried, as far as possible, to check the correctness of these footnotes and references. The papers of Marlene Fisher, I.N. Agrawal and Narsingh Srivastava were bodily lifted from their original sources of publication (which have been duly acknowledged at appropriate places) and are now being printed here with permission of these respective writers and their publishers. Other papers and articles were written fresh and are being printed here for the first time. A few words about my series on Indian-English Literature. I began it in 1980 and with this it is rounded off, without venturing to enter into the domains of Indian- English Drama and Indian-English Prose. This is the third and probably the last in the series dealing with a hitherto relatively unexplored area of Indian-English Literature. I must confess, this project would have remained a dream but for the willing and generous co-operation of my distinguished contributors, to whom all credit has to be given for any amount of success that the book might claim. The contributors deserve my heart-felt thanks. I should also register my deep sense of gratitude to the publishers, printers and binders of this book who put in their best efforts to bring it out in time and in such a glittering get-up.

**Contents and Sample Pages**