Two Short Novels

Two Short Novels - Mulk Raj Anand

340

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.

Author

Mulk Raj Anand (1905-2004) was one of the most prominent novelists and short story writers, and with Raja Rao and R K Narayan, is regarded as a founding father of English fiction in India. Son of a copper-smith and a soldier, Anand was born in Peshawar. He was educated at the Universities of Punjab, Cambridge and London.

Recipient of many coveted honours, he was awarded the Sahitya Akademi Award in 1971, Padma Bhushan in 1967 and held the prestigious Tagore Chair at the Punjab University.

Book Details