atul@ut-ngp.UTEXAS (Atul Arya) (07/25/85)
Please add the follwing to the previous posting on non-fiction: Ved Mehta : Staff writer for New Yorker. The account of his arrival and life at The Arkansas school for Blind in Little Rock in 1948 (New Yorker - Feb.85 issues) was just fascinating. Look for : A Family Affair : India Under three Prime Ministers, The Ledge Between the Streams, Vedi, Gandhi and his Apostles. My fiction selection will definitely include the follwing and many more : Dhanpat Rai Srivastava : Wrote under the pseudoname Premchand. Perhaps one of the greatest writers in Hindi language. His stories are truly Indian. Look for his masterpiece "Godan" and also "Gupt Dhan (Gupta Dhana?)". V.S.Naipaul : Yes, we all know he is not Indian. His prose is very rich, very imaginative, full of small anecdotes and extremely well written. You can ignore his non-fiction (nf) if you do not like his (very strong) opinions. Look for : A bend in the River, A House for Mr. Biswas, The Mystic Masseur, Among the Believers: An Islamic Journey (nf), (His early fiction (60s) is great). R.K.Narayan : He has already been mentioned by many others. He has a new collection of short stories called "Under the Banyan Tree & other stories". A great storyteller in the true Indian traditions! Anita Desai : Virtually unknown in U.S.A. but quite popular in England. Has been in the short list for the Booker Prize (I do not think she has won yet). Look for: Clear Light of the Day, Fire on the Mountain . (Has a new book publ. around Jan.) Ruth P. Jhabwala : Fans of Merchant-Ivory films definitely know her. She also wrote the screen-play for The Bostonians. Look for: Heat and Dust, The Householder, In Search of Love and Beauty. If all this seems too much, beware there are a lot of other great books. So brew some strong coffee, find your favorite chair and ENJOY these books. Any additions to the above list? Atul Arya Dept. of Petroleum Engg. Univ. of Texas at Austin
jayasim@uiucdcsb.Uiuc.ARPA (08/02/85)
Another well known writer in English is Raja Rao. One of his famous novels is "The Cat and Shakespeare". Another of R.K.Narayan's goodies is "My dateless Diary" (I'm not sure of the title) - it is a bunch of light essays on his visit to the US as a Visiting Prof. The part about his being woken up at 5 in the morning because one of his American friends thought that every Indian gets up around that time to practise yoga and meditation makes hilarious reading. usenet: ...!{ihnp4,convex,pur-ee}!uiucdcs!jayasim csnet: jayasim%uiuc@csnet-relay.arpa arpa: jayasim@uiuc.arpa Center for Supercomputing R&D Univ of Illinois Champaign-Urbana