What does one make of pedestrian prose, a plot devoid of suspense and concerned mainly with the bric-a-brac of the lives of women in a Haveli? Add to this no subtlety to the characterization, no range, no depth and to think of it that it walked away with the Sahitya Akademi award!
There is a view supported by, among others, Salman Rushdie and Amit Chaudhuri that Indian Writing in English is superior to literature produced in regional languages. Obviously this opinion fails to take into account the variety, vigour and sincerity that marks writing in various Indian languages. Punjabi fiction being a case in point.
The present volume is a collection of fifteen short stories and two novellas. Ismat Chughtais name should be familiar to anyone who has even a slight interest in Urdu literature and drama. She opened new avenues for women writers in Urdu fiction. According to Tahira Naqvi, Ismat was an unselfconscious feminist (who) was doing…
Before getting into the complexities of analysing or assessing this occultly romantic yarn which self-confessedly was inspired by Russian Jewish writer Anskys (also An-sky, a pseudonym for Shloyme Zanvl Rappoport) play The Dybukk dealing with spirits, it is important to take into consideration the psychology of the novelist who through most part of his life struggled (successfully, though) to traverse the potholed path of narrative diversity that is latent between serious and the not-too-serious, the literary and the populist because this is the key to Krishan Chanders oeuvre which is considerable, and his ideology thats inherently contradictory. He has to his credit 20 novels, 30 collections of short stories, countless radio plays, and several travelogues…
Selected Short Stories and Plays portrays an era when Indian society was coming to terms with the idea of independence and democracy. It comprises sixteen short stories and seven plays, each depicting the struggle of the characters within, in the scheme of circumstances being paved for development in the modern age….
Engels said of Hegel that his ‘principles’ were revolutionary but the conclusions conservative. The inexorable spread of Marxism in the 20th century has resulted in a growing trend among bourgeois social sciences to combat it by turning its progressive principles against their revolutionary thrust.