Reading Islands in the Stream in translation almost thirty years after it was originally published in Hindi, it is difficult to visualize how it could have stirred up such controversy or earned so much disapproval. But that it did is a fact and there are some even now who feel that Ajneya could have done better than to limit himself to the portrayal of man-woman relationships and that as a novel Shekhar: Ek Jivani is much better. I have not read Shekhar: Ek Jivani so there can be no comparison. What struck one foremost about this novel was the spontaneous flow of narrative that one normally does not find in translations. A reading of the inside flap of the dust jacket made things clear—the author has translated it himself, hence the effective blending of thought and language to a new medium.
Sept-Oct 1980, volume 5, No 9/10