About the Book This selection of twelve interviews from The Indian Literary Review provides readers with rare insights into the way in which some of India's foremost writers work. Collected over a decade (1978 89), the interviews are not the less interesting because some of them appeared first at a time when what we now consider a writer's best work-as in the case of Nayantara Sahgal, for example had still not been published then. The development of a writer is an on-going process; the writer's views expressed at any one point of time, which may be signposts of change, are integral to his/her creative imagination.
Faiz Ahmed Faiz, K.A. Abbas, Amritlal Nagar, and Gopinath Mohanty are now no more but what they have written remains. These interviews published here record how they approached what they wrote. The various writers included here write or wrote in different Indian. languages but their voices have been heard, and are recognised beyond our immediate shores. This volume of interviews attempts to bring those voices closer to the reader in face to face conversations about literature.
About the Author Devindra Kohli (born 1940) was educated in Delhi, Leeds (U.K.) and Buffalo (U.S.A.). He has been Professor of English at the University of Kashmir, Srinagar, since 1986. Apart from his books and articles, he has been involved with the editing of The Indian Literary Review since its inception in 1978.
Introduction The Indian Literary Review was started at a time in our literary history when the idea of an Indian literature within the parameters of linguistic multiplicity was still a relatively new concept. Indian writers, especially those writing in English, for example, were struggling for an identity that was not colonial and for acceptability within the corridors of academia. Literary translation, the one most important thing that can bridge the various languages within a shared literary tradition, was also neglected and regarded a wholly derivative and uncreative activity.
Book's Contents and Sample Pages **Contents and Sample Pages**
