Anand, Mulk Raj
(b. 1905), Indian writer. An influential Indian novelist and short story writer in the mid-twentieth century, Mulk Raj Anand was born in 1905 in Peshawar, now in western Pakistan, and as a young man was active in literary circles in England until 1939. His first novels formed a trio: Untouchable (1935), Coolie (1936), and Two Leaves and a Bud (1937). Written in English, such books struck a chord with a somewhat leftist readership both in Britain and in India. They offered a rather superficial political and psychological analysis of India's "downtrodden masses" that drew its inspiration from D. H. Lawrence, E. M. Forster, Emile Zola, Charles Dickens, various Russian novelists, Marxism, and Gandhian nationalism. But Anand was able to contribute something new to Indian writing by showing how a novelist can make use of the drama of revolutionary nationalism. Tellingly, he wrote little of any note after India gained independence in 1947. Like his contemporaries Raja Rao and R. K. Narayan, Anand was concerned with exploring the importance of Indian society for humanity at large.
Further Reading
Verma, K. D. (2000) The Indian Imagination: Critical Essays on Indian Writing in English. New York: St. Martin's Press.
Williams, H. M. (1977) Indo-Anglian Literature 1800–1970: A Survey. Columbia, MO: South Asia Books.
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