Mulk Raj Anand Was An Indian English Writer Of World Repute. His First Ten Books Were From London. He Has Over 22 Books Of Fiction And A Large Number Of Publications On Art, Education And Culture, And Thousands Of Letters. Only Three Volumes Of His Letters Have Been Published. Some Of His Works Have Gone Out Of Print. The Book Is The First Attempt Of Its Kind To Fill This Gap And Introduce The Author To A Large Readership. Here Is An Earnest Endeavour To Give A ýFeelý Of His Immortal Art And Vision. It Opens With ýThe Lost Childý And Records, In All, 15 Short Stories. Then Selections From 15 Novels Have Been Given. The Final Part Carries Four Letters Of Anand, Culled From Three Anthologies Of Letters.
Anniversary Commemorative Volume. Saros Cowasjee's laudatory proposal to bring forth a commemorative volume of Mulk Raj Anand's two short novels, Lament on the Death of a Master of Arts and Death of a Hero, on his birthday will undoubtedly help readers to get acquainted with another challenging side of the celebrated author of Untouchable and Coolie. While Lament on the Death of a Master of Arts, takes us back to the British colonial India of the modernist era of the thirties, Death of a Hero brings us face to face with the historical realities of the beginnings of free India. Lament is a poetic dirge on the philosophies of pain, loss and grief, but Death as an epitaph is Anand's poetic aside on liberty and the function of the poet as reformer and legislator.
‘Mulk Raj Anand writes about the Indians much as Chekhov writes about the Russians’— Elizabeth Bowen in Tatler One of the founding fathers of the Indian novel in English, Mulk Raj Anand is best known for the impassioned social critique contained in his writings. This omnibus edition brings together Anand’s finest novels which capture the ambivalence of a nation caught between tradition and modernity: Untouchable (1935), Coolie (1936) and Private Life of an Indian Prince (1953). In these acute and moving portraits, vitality of narrative accompanies brilliance in characterization.
Mulk Raj Anand's extraordinarily powerful story of an Untouchable in India's caste system, with a new introduction by Ramachandra Guha, author of Gandhi Bakha is a proud and attractive young man, yet none the less he is an Untouchable - an outcast in India's caste system. It is a system that is even now only slowly changing and was then as cruel and debilitating as that of apartheid. Into this vivid re-creation of one day in the life of Bakha, sweeper and toilet-cleaner, Anand pours a vitality, fire and richness of detail that earn his place as one of the twentieth century's most important Indian writers. 'One of the most eloquent and imaginative works to deal with this difficult and emotive subject' Martin Seymour-Smith 'It recalled to me very vividly the occasions I have walked 'the wrong way' in an Indian city, and it is a way down which no novelist has yet taken me' E. M. Forster
Coolie portrays the picaresque adventures of Munoo, a young boy forced to leave his hill village to fend for himself and discover the world. His journey takes him far from home to towns and cities, to Bombay and Simla, sweating as servant, factory-worker and rickshaw driver. It is a fight for survival that illuminates, with raw immediacy, the grim fate of the masses in pre-Partition India.
Bakha is a proud and attractive young man. Nonetheless he is an Untouchable- an outcast in India's caste system. Into this vivid recreation of a single day in the sweeper and toilet-cleaner Bakha's life, Anand pours a vitality, fire, and richness of detail that earn his place as one of the most important Indian writers of the twentieth century.
The Big Heart is a moving tale of conflict, love and passion centred on a group of craftsmen trying to come to grips with automation that threatens their livelihood and traditional way of life. Ananta, a coppersmith, returns to his home town of Amritsar after having worked in the more industrialised cities of Bombay and Ahmedabad. Like most people of his craft, he has difficulty making a living as the introduction of machines is throwing the craftsmen out of work. The coppersmiths face both destitution and a break up of their whole society based on age-old traditions and customs. Yet, Ananta can see both the utility and the inevitability of the machines and the need for the coppersmiths to band together so that power of the machine could offer a new life for those whom it threatens. But unsettled, tense and suspicious as the coppersmiths are, a spark of demagogy culminates in violence and wanton destruction which ends in sudden, unexpected tragedy. The Big Heart is a memorable work. It is passionate, earthy and urgent. It’s also timeless in that it is an evocative story of the churn and roil that change and modernity always create in their wake. In Ananta, Mulk Raj Anand gives us an unforgettable character. He is virile and passionate, brave, strong and tender, of large appetites yet caring and generous of spirit. Though unlettered, Ananta intuitively grasps that the conflict created by the coming of the machines can only be resolved by a spirit of understanding and accommodation on all sides. Thus a big heart alone can help society meet the existential challenge that change throws up, especially for those less pre- pared for it. Equally, Anand draws a vivid portrait of the Punjab and its people — his language infused with the clamour, sights and smells of the land.
Conversations in Bloomsbury occupies a distinct place in Mulk Raj Anand's writings. Outside of his fiction it is the most significant of his works and, along with Apology for Heroism, is the key to understanding Anand's literary, social and political beliefs. Living in London from 1925 to 1945, Anand came to know the prominent writers and intellectuals of the metropolis, many of whom belonged to what came to be known as the Bloomsbury Group. In twenty engrossing chapters, he recalls his wide-ranging conversations with E.M. Forster, Aldous Huxley, Leonard and Virginia Woolf, Clive Bell, C.E.M. Joad, T.S. Eliot and several others.The four chapters on the enigmatic T.S. Eliot are the highlight of the book. They offer a penetrating and sympathetic understanding of Eliot's mind and reveal Anand's capacity not to allow his own personal view of the man to cloud his admiration for the poet's literary achievements. In the imaginative rendering of his actual conversations, Anand has faithfully, often evocatively, captured the literary, cultural and political climate of England of the 1920s and 1930s. The book reveals both Anand's ambivalence towards the Bloomsbury Group as well as the ambivalent attitude of the British literati towards India's freedom. Together, the chapters metamorphose into a long autobiographical essay about the writer discovering his convictions and his nationalistic roots in a foreign land.
The volume is remarkable for the variety of its inspiration...' — Manchester Guardian, UK 'Anand's picture is real, comprehensive, and subtle, and the shifts in moods, from farce to comedy, from pathos to tragedy, and from the realistic to the poetic, are remarkable.' — V S Pritchett, British Literary Critic 'Anand is indeed adept in the art of spinning a yarn.' — Punjab Journal of English Studies, Guru Nanak Dev University
About the author: mulk raj anand, an indian english language author who depicted the lives of the poorer castes in a traditional indian society anand, a novelist, short story writer, essayist and an art critic, is frequently referred to as the founding father of indo-english writing anands prolific writing career spanned over 75 years, during which he was widely identified with the quest for a just, equitable and forward looking india anand wrote extensively in areas as diverse as art and sculpture, politics, indian literature and the history of ideas he has been conferred with several awards including the sahitya akademi award in 1972 and the padma bhushan for his contribution to english literature
In Lajwanti, Mulk Raj Anand focuses on a woman's predicament and struggle to find an identity for herself. Frustrated by a rigid pattern of social relationships, gender bias, religious bigotry and her own petty human foibles, her abject condition serves as a metaphor for sacrifice and servility which forms the thematic heart of these stories.
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