Bookatlas
1905–2004South Asia
Portrait of Mulk Raj Anand

Mulk Raj Anand

India

Blunt and unadorned, moving at the pace of a single working day; prose stripped of ornament so the injustice it records stays fully visible.

Anand studied philosophy at Cambridge and London, moving in Bloomsbury circles where he befriended E. M. Forster, who wrote the preface to his debut novel. He was also active in Indian nationalist politics, meeting Gandhi and briefly living at his ashram, an experience that sharpened his conviction that fiction should confront caste and poverty directly rather than aestheticize them.

Untouchable (1935) compresses a single day in the life of Bakha, a Delhi latrine-cleaner, into an unsparing account of the humiliations built into the caste system, a deliberately plain, unornamented style meant to make the injustice impossible to look away from. He went on to write further novels of laborers and peasants, and helped found the Progressive Writers' Movement alongside contemporaries like Premchand.

He spent his later career also as an editor and arts administrator in independent India, dying in Pune in 2004 at ninety-eight.

Postcolonial Literatures

Their books in the atlas

  1. 1935
    Cover of Untouchable
    Untouchable
    Lvl 3political novel
  2. 1936
    Cover of Coolie
    Coolie
    Lvl 5colonial & postcolonial

Meanwhile, elsewhere

Portrait of Ba Jin1904–2005Ba JinChinaEast Asia · ChinaPortrait of Nathalie Sarraute1900–1999Nathalie SarrauteFranceWestern Europe · FrancePortrait of Halldór Laxness1902–1998Halldór LaxnessIcelandWestern Europe · IcelandPortrait of Ernesto Sabato1911–2011Ernesto SabatoArgentinaLatin America · ArgentinaPortrait of Rachel de Queiroz1910–2003Rachel de QueirozBrazilLatin America · BrazilPortrait of Naguib Mahfouz1911–2006Naguib MahfouzEgyptMiddle East · Egypt

If you like Anand, try

Portrait of Alan Paton1903–1988Alan PatonSouth Africashared movement: Postcolonial Literatures · kindred genres: colonial & postcolonial, political novelPortrait of Mahasweta Devi1926–2016Mahasweta DeviIndiashared movement: Postcolonial Literatures · kindred genres: political novel, tragedy · same region & eraPortrait of Raja Rao1908–2006Raja RaoIndiashared movement: Postcolonial Literatures · kindred genres: colonial & postcolonial, political novel · same region & eraPortrait of Pramoedya Ananta Toer1925–2006Pramoedya Ananta ToerIndonesiashared movement: Postcolonial Literatures · kindred genres: colonial & postcolonial, bildungsromanPortrait of Paul Scott1920–1978Paul ScottEnglandkindred genres: colonial & postcolonial, tragedy · neighboring movementsPortrait of Elizabeth Gaskell1810–1865Elizabeth GaskellEnglandkindred genres: political novel, bildungsroman · neighboring movements