Seven Summers

Seven Summers, first drafted when Mulk Raj Anand was a student at London University but not published till 1951, recreates the events and feelings of the first seven years of the writer s life, or what he called his half unconscious and half conscious childhood . First of the seven volumes of autobiographical fiction that Anand conceptualized but never completed, this book is full of memorable scenes and people observed through the eyes of a child. The most impressive of them all being the Coronation Durbar in Delhi to which our young hero is smuggled wrapped in a blanket so that the Sahibs might not object to the presence of so discordant an element into so gorgeous a ceremony . This edition of Seven Summers is a special reissue of the classic autobiography to commemorate Anand s birth centenary.