The Picador Book of Modern Indian Literature — Amit Chaudhuri

`Can it be true that Indian writing, that endlessly rich, complex and problematic entity, is to be represented by a handful of writers who only write in English . . . ? More importantly, is it possible to assess properly and appreciate the merits of this handful of writers without any recourse to the diverse intellectual tradition to which they do or do not belong?' So Amit Chaudhuri asks in the introduction to the first truly comprehensive anthology of writing from India. Both his introduction and the very contents of the book, which cover about a hundred and fifty years, shatter many contemporary illusions about the literary and intellectual traditions of this continent. This anthology, going against the grain, gives the reader a vivid sense of the amazingly heterogeneous and complex literary practices and debates that have engaged writers in India from the nineteenth century to the present day, showing how modern Indian writing is not a single tradition, but multiple, sometimes competing, traditions embedded within traditions. Translations from Hindi, Bengali, Urdu, Tamil and the languages of the south sit alongside writing in English, bringing to light the greatest and most engaging writers from a modern India, for the first time truly putting in context the recent `resurgence' in Indian writing. With insightful biographical and critical introductions to the writers and their work, from Tagore's `The Postmaster', one of the earliest modern Indian short stories, and his meditations on Bengali nursery rhymes, to A. K. Ramanujan's extraordinary essay in English, `Is There An Indian Way of Thinking?'; from Nirad C. Chaudhuri writing about the rich Bengalis in Calcutta to Premchand's superb story `The Chess Players' (made into a film by Satyajit Ray); and from the hugely popular Hindi writer Nirmal Verma's moving story of a young couple to an extract from Vikram Seth's The Golden Gate, The Picador Book of Modern Indian Literature is the most informative and important anthology of Indian writing to date.