Gautam Choubey’s introduction to the translation of one of Nirala’s novella and six stories recreates the persona of the iconoclast poet, refusing to be cowed down by authority, be it literary or political. It transverses through the times of the poet with amazing insight and anecdotes sprinkled with lines from his own poetry to really make us understand what made him ‘nirala’, the unique one. The translation itself is excellent, much needed to tell the world of Nirala’s tryst with language in giving a new dimension to the craft of writing.

Alka Saraogi

Nirala is, in my view, the greatest Hindi poet of the twentieth century. As Choubey points out in his Introduction, Nirala was also a wonderfully versatile writer of prose. Choubey presents English readers with some of Nirala’s stories that are pathbreaking both in content and in style.
Ruth Vanita
Dr Gautam Choubey offers an engrossing translation of selected short stories by Nirala, as well as Nirala’s novel, Billesur Bakariha, whose satirical exploration of caste and socio-economic realities remains highly topical. This collection of fiction by one of Hindi’s greatest writers, accompanied by an erudite introduction, is a welcome addition to the world of translated literature.
Tabish Khair
Nirala's vivid sketches of life in rural and small-town India before independence draw a darkly hilarious portrait of a world changing as modernity creeps into traditional communities. They tell compelling stories of survival in a harsh, unforgiving world subjected to a relentlessly unsentimental scrutiny. Nirala's characters engage in desperate maneuvers to cope with scheming and hostile neighbours, outwit complacent hypocrites and puncture the pomposity of deluded hedonists and ingeniously negotiate with narrow and rigid social and religious constraints. Delightfully irreverent and irrepressibly playful, Nirala deftly employs pungent humour as social critique and sharp-edged irony as a powerful mode of moral evaluation.

- M

Suryakant Tripathi ‘Nirala’ (1896-1961) was an editor, essayist, novelist and one of the architects of Chhayawaad Movement in Hindi poetry. His writings, alongside those of Premchand and Jaishankar Prasad, herald the first major flowering of Hindi literature in the twentieth century. Some of his notable works include Anaamika, Geetika, Tulsidas, Chaturi Chamar, Kulli Bhat and Ravindra Kavita Kaanan.

Gautam Choubey teaches English at Delhi University. He has previously translated Pandey Kapil’s Bhojpuri novel Phoolsunghi, Andre Beitelle’s Democracy and Its Institutions and co-translated the Hindi novel Twelfth Fail. Chakka Jaam, his forthcoming novel, is set in the
turbulent 1970s. It is a riveting saga of family,
friendship and love, scattered across Bihar,
Bengal and Rangoon.