Ajneya is one of the biggest names in Hindi letters today. His impact, both on Hindi fiction and poetry, has been considerable, and is a part of a growing legend. Even the way Vatsyayan acquired his pen name ‘Ajneya’ (the un-knowable) has a story to it. A freedom fighter, he had to smuggle his early writings out of prison.
Indian readers could have been spared the solemn Fore¬word, intended presumably for an audience in Australia, where this English version was first published. It is quite out of tune with the irreverent and incisive style of the novel, its alternating moods of comedy and despair, its bawdiness and violence, its rejec¬tion of all pretension and solemnity.
For Mahashveta Devi, writ¬ing is a mission, a cause and a crusade. This is what we are told about the writer in the blurb of her latest novel to appear in a Hindi transla¬tion. After ‘1084 Ki Maori’, ‘Jangal Ka Davedar’ and ‘Agnigarbh’, Mahashveta Devi has attempted a novel about the Adivasis of Bihar.
This volume is a revised ver¬sion of the author’s doctoral dissertation submitted to the University of London in 1975. The study covers the period 1950-77 and is based on secondary published sources.
As a religion Islam is under¬stood by few and misunder¬stood by many. It is indeed tragic that the intellectual con¬tent of Islamic ideology is being ignored, although Islam expects its followers to be well-informed and knowledgeable. The followers of Islam appear to be ensnared by the ritualis¬tic part of their faith rather than the ideals so beautifully expressed in the Quranic text.
Man is ultimately alone—and defeated. Through a dense particularity of circumstance this novel breathes a loneliness that imperceptibly takes the shape of universal human ex¬perience. The narrator is a Russian, exiled in India. He is without family, having lost his first wife and child in an acci¬dent and his second, an Indian, through divorce; without friends, having deliberately warded off friendship in an at-tempt to preserve his identity from being swallowed up by the land of exile.