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Mirrorwork: 50 Years of Indian Writing : 1947-1997

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This book, edited by Salman Rushdie and Elizabeth West, was published in 1997 and contained 32 writers and as many works, created in the 50 years after India's independence. There were 14 extracts from novels, 12 short stories, 4 excerpts from memoirs, 1 excerpt from a nonfiction novel, and 1 speech.

As far as could be determined, more than two-thirds of the pieces came from the 1980s and 90s, and a fifth from the 1940s and 50s. There seemed to be very little from the 1960s and 70s.

Though this was an anthology of Indian writing, also included were works by two authors from Pakistan -- Bapsi Sidhwa (1938-) and Sara Suleri (1953-) -- together with another who left India for Pakistan, Saadat Hasan Manto (1912-55). And Ruth Prawer Jhabvala (1927-), a woman of Jewish heritage who was born in Germany and married to an Indian. V. S. Naipaul, according to Rushdie's introduction, declined inclusion in the collection.

Nearly all the writers selected had spent some years living in the West or currently live there. The few exceptions, as far as could be judged, were Narayan, Manto, Ray, Chatterjee and Roy.

In his introduction, Rushdie generated some controversy by stating that in the course of compilation he'd found Indian prose in English during the period was proving to be stronger and more important than writing in the vernacular languages, and that the writing in English was perhaps India's most valuable contribution to the world of books. As a result, all but one of the selections made for the anthology were written originally in that language. Of works in the many vernacular languages, only Manto's piece from the 1950s, translated from Urdu, was judged worthy of inclusion.

On the other hand, the editor of a more recent anthology of Indian prose, Amit Chaudhuri, has argued that Indian writing is much too diverse to be represented only by authors who write in English, many of whom live in the West. And that the most profound impact of Western culture on India, and Indians' complex response to it, can be discovered in the vernacular languages. It was worthwhile to keep the opposed viewpoints in mind while reading.

In Rushdie's anthology, roughly four generations of writers were included. The oldest were those born in the late 19th century or very early 20th (Nehru, Nirad Chaudhuri, Anand, Narayan, Desani, Manto). Following were those born in the 1920s through early 40s (Ray, Markandaya, Jhabvala, Anita Desai, Gita Mehta), the late 1940s through mid-60s (Rushdie, Sealy, Mistry, Seth, Ghosh, Tharoor, Kesavan, Chandra, Roy, Amit Chaudhuri), and the early 1970s (Kiran Desai).

Though many of the authors in this collection live abroad, all the works of fiction except for Desani's were set entirely in India or Pakistan. For the nonfiction, an excerpt from a work by Ghosh began with the narrator's attending a wedding somewhere in the Egyptian countryside, but his memories carried him back to a time of unrest in East Pakistan during the 1960s.

Some of the works of fiction in this anthology took place in the countryside, in nameless villages, or on a train. But many were set in cities: Delhi, Calcutta, Bombay, Madras, a city in Kerala, a town in Indian Punjab, and Lahore. A number concerned characters from the middle classes, and Chandra's was set among the well to do. This differed from the selections of a collection like Best Loved Indian Stories from Penguin Books India, which contained many earlier stories that were often set in the countryside or in nameless towns, among farmers and villagers. In Rushdie's collection, there wasn't a bullock cart in sight.

In terms of style, for me the main distinction in Rushdie's anthology was between the realists and what could be called the magic realists. The realists in their variety were concerned mainly with social observation and social types, the relations between people or psychological introspection, in lighter or darker shades (Markandaya, Jhabvala, Anita Desai, Gita Mehta, Mistry, Seth, Appachana, Hariharan, Chandra, Vakil).

The magic realist writers, on the other hand, leaned much more toward flamboyant wordplay, exaggeration or improbable situations, minute description of action, sights or smells, or some combination thereof, with relatively low degrees of coherence and readability (Desani, Sealy, Rushdie). The work by Desani showed the other two's debt to him in terms of style.

Other writers might be described as falling somewhere between realism and magic realism (Ray, Tharoor, Kesavan, Roy, Kiran Desai). Ray's short story was meticulously realist, except for the fabulist event at its center: a skeptic discovered a birdlike predator from the prehistoric age. Kesavan's followed an introspective older man walking around Delhi and contrasting the sights and smells with his memories of the U.S., before switching abruptly to different characters and an improbable situation. Roy's, an excerpt from The God of Small Things, was interesting for its minute, intense descriptions of actions, sense impressions and psychological states. The excerpt from Desai's novel described a childbirth amid a raging storm and flooding rivers, as an airplane flew overhead dropping care packages.

The extract from Tharoor's satirical novel was a sweeping view of events from Indian history in the 1920s as described clearly by a narrator, but taking historical figures like the Gandhis and Nehru and recasting them as characters from the Hindu epic, the Mahabharata. His work may be in a category of its own.

Various other categories in the anthology were memoirs dealing with moments in India's history, the seasons in a village at the turn of the century, a boy's life at a school for the blind, or a woman's memories of family, food and her native land (Sahgal, Nirad Chaudhuri, Ved Mehta, Suleri). Other prose works touched on independence or Indira Gandhi's assassination (Nehru, Chatterjee), while some stories dealt with partition, either with black humor (Manto) or a grim recording of the violence (Sidhwa). Some tales were mainly concerned with light humor (Anand, Narayan). There was also a piece by the writer Firdaus Kanga on a gay, disabled narrator's attraction to his male friend, interesting more for its subject than its style.

For me, the more memorable works were Nirad Chaudhuri's slow-paced but atmospheric description of the seasons in a village life around the river. The excerpt from Markandaya's 1950s novel Nectar in a Sieve that described memorably the desperation of a farming couple without money or crops. The work by Hariharan in which an old, devout Hindu woman began violating proscriptions against food, drink and behavior as she approached death. And the excerpt from Roy's novel.

Among the other Indians writing in English who weren't selected for this anthology: Raja Rao (1908-2006), K. A. Abbas (1914-87), Khushwant Singh (1915-), Ruskin Bond (1934-), Manoj Das (1934-), Bharati Mukherjee (1940-), Manjula Padmanabhan (1953-) and Sunetra Gupta (1965-).

Among those in other languages who weren't included for the time period: in Bengali, Manik Bandyopadhyay (1908-56), Buddhadev Bose (1908-74), Mahashweta Devi (1926-) and Sunil Gangopadhyay (1934-). In Hindi, Krishna Sobti (1925-) and Nirmal Verma (1929-2005). In Kannada, M. V. Iyengar (1891-1986) and U. R. Anantha Murthy (1932-). In Malayam, O. V. Vijayan (1930-2005). In Marathi, Gangadhar Gadgil (1923-). In Punjabi, Amrita Pritam (1919-2005). In Tamil, Ambai (1945-). And in Urdu, K. A. Abbas again, plus Ismat Chughtai, (1915-92), Qurratulain Hyder (1927-2007), Surendra Prakash (1930-), and the Pakistani writer Enver Sajjad (1935-).

One way to determine the relative truth of the claims made by Rushdie and Chaudhuri would be to read the latter's collection, The Picador Book of Modern Indian Literature (2001), published in 2004 in the U.S. under the Vintage title. It's somewhat more balanced, with half of the selections in English and half translated from some of the vernacular languages -- mainly Bengali, but also Hindi, Urdu, Kannada, Malayalam, Tamil and Oriya. And it offers a bit more background commentary on the writers and their concerns.

Like Rushdie, Chaudhuri hasn't escaped criticism, in the latter's case for the generous space given to translations from Bengali -- the language of his own region -- compared to other vernacular languages. For a more balanced selection of regional writing, there are Our Favourite Indian Stories (2001) and The Penguin Book of Modern Indian Short Stories (1989, revised 2001), as well as anthologies of short fiction translated from the vernacular languages that've been published every one or two years since 1990 by Katha Books of New Delhi.

Anyway, accepting Chaudhuri's argument about the lesser importance of the English writers didn't mean for me that the stories in Rushdie's collection were uninteresting. A certain amount of the dislike recorded by other readers for this anthology seemed grounded in scorn for Rushdie's assertions. But why blame the stories and authors for the claims he made for them.

It would be really unfair to say the book has not been a representative collection of Indian writing in English. It is, though a few glaring points puts it at a disadvantage to become a volume to be cherished. The editors' seems to have allowed their backgrounds and biases to rule which determined their choice to large extent. This could have been avoided had the editors gave a harder look on the literary environment in India which is rapidly changing for the better. Much of the excellent work produced in vernacular languages is conveniently forgotten ascribing lack of good translation - a reason which simply does not hold water. And, if the all time favourite 'Tryst with Destiny'is included, no harm would have come if one of much sought after editorials by VN Narayanan or a science fiction was included. A translated piece of Hindi heartland politics mirrored by say, Rahi Masoom Raza could fill the gap. The absence of the enigmatic Khushwant Singh disturbs. The collection gives a fair space to new writers of the subcontinent, even if they are now based outside India. However, it remains skewed towards the age old mysticism and bullock carts in an age where these are pushed to the background by the fast enveloping modernity and automation. it is forgotten that we have a thriving middle class and a large educated elite which is crying to be heard and represented in our stories. For a book claiming to represent 50 years of writing, it is a bit focussed narrowly. The collection, though remains a must read. I read it over a long stretch of time, finishing many other volumes inthe the meantime, and would recommend the same way.

I bought my copy inspite of reading severeal reviews criticizing Mr. Rushdie's choice of literature to represent Indian writing. ALthough I agree with most of the ctiticism, I was pleasently surprised to find that I did like the book immensely. It had been many years since I had read authors such as Anita Desai, and works such as Nayantara Sahgal's "With Pride and Prejudice" were enough for me to oversome the prejudice that I had in my when I started off reading it.

Had Mr. Rushdie not claimed to have collected works representing the entire Indian literature spectrum, he could have been fended a lot of the criticism that this book received.

The book was practically in mint condition--the only sign it had been used was a slight crease in the cover. The pages were in good condition, and the book still had that "new" smell. Shipped in good time. No qualms about buying from this seller.

I enjoyed this anthology quite a bit.It may be "self-serving and slanted towards his friends" but his friends write *well* and I enjoyed reading their work. His introduction is especially good and addresses several issues that are mentioned above.

No one should expect an anthology to be complete- their very nature is to exclude more than they include.

I appreciate seeing some of my favorite "Indian" authors in print (Rushdie, Vikram Seth, Arundhati Roy among others) and I look forward to a companion edition in the future.

If anyone would like to recommend another anthology of post-indepence Indian fiction I would be interested in hearing about it.

EXCERPTS FROM A REVIEW IN THE TRIBUNE, CHANDIGARH, INDIA, AUGUST 1997....Out of the thirty-three writers of the book, no less than twenty-two are non-resident Indians, some of whom we have never heard of. Anjana Apachana comes as a surprise (Who's she? Rushdie tells us she has been publishing short stories and that she is U.S.-based, which is probably enough for her name to be included among the best!), Vikram Chandra (remember the author of the almost impossible-to-read Red Earth and Pouring Rain which, nevertheless, got rave reviews?), Amit Chaudhuri, Nirad C. Chaudhuri, Anita Desai, Kiran Desai (no one in India has heard of her either. Her first book is yet to be published. But she is Anita Desai's daughter and Rushdie -- without cross-checking his facts, awards her the distinction establishing the "first dynasty" of Indian fiction!), G.V. Desani, Ruth Prawer Jhabhwala, Firdaus Kanga, Kamala Markandaya, Gita Mehta, Ved Mehta, Rohinton Mistry, Padma Pereira, Allan Sealy, Vikram Seth, Bapsi Sidhwa and Sara Suleri (Pakistanis, born after 1947. What are they doing in this collection? "This anthology has no need for Partitions," explains Rushdie!), Shashi Tharoor, and Ardashir Vakil. Almost all these are writer have chosen to work or settle abroad. In all probability, they are the ones Rushdie has been in touch with over the last decade or so. And in his enthusiasm over their writings (as he admits in the introduction, doesn't most of it echo his own work so much?) he has been oblivious to what has been happening in India, in the home country where all these expatriates originally came from.

Rushdie's naiveté, his sweeping contentions, his presumption that this - and no other - is the best in Indian writing, needs to be challenged. He has compiled not the best of "Indian Writing" but "Indian Writing of the Diasporic Tradition" (even though he seems unaware of Bharati Mukherjee's existence). Between the two, between his intention and his achievement, there lies a vast, gap... MANJU JAIDKA

Very slanted in its choice of the authors, the book can hardly claim to be representative of Indian writing. Indo-English writing is a miniscule portion of Indian writing, both in quality and quantity, this fact has not been addressed in the editorial choices.