Daffodils on Fire

In this collection of stories Daffodils on Fire, Mridula Garg writes with a passion and agony that has within it compassion and empathy. She strips people to reveal their oddities but also to look for beauty; for a kernel of hope to accept human life as it is.

The author works on her stories like a painter, with just a few strokes, a line here and there and a blob of colour in between. She can show you daffodils blooming and daffodils singed in fire. She can take you to heights of snow for a sledgeride and pull you back.

She merges her characters together wiping away the differences of gender, space and time. Everything gets blended into one and many. And you find you are one of them.

Mridula Garg did her Masters in Economics and taught at the Delhi University before turning to creative writing in 1970. She has published 18 books in Hindi (Six novels, seven short story collections, three plays and two books of essays) to great acclaim both critical and popualar. Of these she has rendered three into English. She has been a distinguished columnist, has travelled widely in the West, lecturing on the issues of environment, women and child servitude and reading from her works. She was awarded the Hellman Hammet Grant by the Human Rights Watch of New York for courageous writing in 2001 and the Vyas Samman in 2004 for her novel, Kathgulab. Her works in English are Daffodils on Fire (Short story collection), Chittacobra and Country of Goodbyes (both novels). Chittacobra was first published in Hindi in 1979, and created an immediate furore in the literary world. It has had several reprints till now and is a bestseller still. It has also been translated into German.

**Contents and Sample Pages**