Description
‘Startlingly avant garde in its form, as well as its content’ –Business Standard
Samar, a young scholar, is married to Prabha against his will. Ego and frustration combine to make him refuse to say even a single word to his wife on the day of the marriage. They live thus, without speaking, for nearly a year. Until one moment when their suppressed emotions burst through and lead to a passionate reconciliation. Funny, affectionate and hard-hitting, this is one of the most unique love stories in Indian writing. ‘The first Hindi work which attempted to jolt the fabled Bharatiya Sanskriti (Indian culture) out of its smug stupor’-Countercurrents
‘The enfant terrible of Hindi literature’-Tehelka
ISBN 978-0143423829
Rajendra Yadav (1929-2013) was among the most important and famous modern Hindi authors and intellectuals. Raised and educated in Agra, he wrote his first and greatest novel, Sara Akash, in 1951 (first published as Pret Bolte Hain). Never out of print since it has sold over 500,000 copies and was made into a film directed by Basu Chatterjee in 1969. Along with Kamleshwar and Mohan Rakesh, Yadav started the Nayi Kahani movement, which transformed the Hindi literary scene in the 1950s and ‘60s. Author of seven novels and twelve short story collections, Yadav reinvented himself as an editor, political commentator and translator. In 1986, he re-launched Premchand’s magazine Hans, and, with assistance from associate editor Archana Varma, he turned it into Hindi’s most prominent literary journal for over a decade. Yadav ran his own publishing house Akshar Prakashan, where his office became a centre for literary debate, and he developed Hans into a controversial forum for women’s and minority voices. He is survived by his wife, well-known Hindi fiction writer Mannu Bhandari and their daughter Rachna.
Raised and educated in India, Ruth Vanita divides her time between Gurgaon and Missoula. Her first novel, Memory of Light, appeared from Penguin in 2020. Her next book of poems, A Hidden Player, will appear from Copper Coin in 2022. She taught at Delhi University for 20 years; for 13 years, she was active in the women’s movement and worked as co-editor of India’s first nationwide feminist magazine, Manushi, of which she was a founder. She is the author of many books on same-sex sexuality in Indian and British literature; her next book, The Dharma of Justice in the Sanskrit Epics: Debates on Gender, Varna and Species, will appear from Oxford University Press in 2022.
