This book, first published in 1933, was the first text on the general Hindu attitude to art. It sums up under the wider title of the Hindu view of art all such considerations - religious, philosophic, sociological, aesthetic and technical - as might be helpful for the understanding of Indian art.

This book, first published in 1933, was the first text on the general Hindu attitude to art. It sums up under the wider title of the Hindu view of art all such considerations - religious, philosophic, sociological, aesthetic and technical - as might be helpful for the understanding of Indian art.

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).

Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating back to the 1900s and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. We are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork.

The present selection is an attempt to represent the wide range and variety of Mulk Raj Anand's short stories. The first group represents the stories of 'lyric awareness'. As in all poetry, the themes are elemental, such as birth and death, beauty, love and childhood, and the treatment often reveals a symbolic dimension added to realistic presentation. The prevailing mood of the second group of stories in this selection is of the 'tears at the heart of things'. These stories are naturally allied to the brief tales of 'lyric awareness' but with a difference. Through his acute understanding of the complex social forces at work, Anand describes an India where tradition clashes with modernity. The range and variety of Anand's short stories are not only in mood, tone and spirit but also in locale, characters and form. The setting ranges from the Punjab (as in The Parrot in the Cage) to Uttar Pradesh (as in The Price of Bananas) and Kashmir (as in Kashmir Idyll). Both the village and the city get almost equal representation. Mulk Raj Anand's stories are a museum of human nature. Among the Indian writers of the short story in English, he has few peers.