Greatest Short Stories ----Mulk Raj Anand ----jaico
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.