HOME | NEW RELEASES | BESTSELLERS | BOOKSELLER LOUNGE | AUTHOR GALLERY | SUBJECT TREE | BOOKSTORE
CONTACT US | ABOUT US | INVITATION TO AUTHORS | CATALOGUE | REGISTER | LOGIN
    You are in Home Book Details
Business and Management
Investment, Stock Market and Personal Finance
Tax Planning
India
Politics and Current Affairs
Military and Strategic Affairs
Reference, Encyclopaedias and Dictionaries
Biography and Autobiography
Fiction and Literature
Religion and Spirituality
Career Guidance
Self Improvement & Self Help
Economics
The Big Heart
Edited, with an introduction by Saros Cowasjee
Mulk Raj Anand The Big Heart : Mulk Raj Anand : Vision Books : Book (ISBN: 8170949285)
Pages: 296
Price: Rs. 795
Format: Hardcover
ISBN13/10: 9788170949282 / 8170949285
Availability: Yes
Published in 2015
eBook available at:
Buy at Amazon       Buy at Google       Buy at Apple iBooks
Buy Now
write comments
refer to friend
Table of Contents

The Big Heart is a moving tale of conflict, love and passion centred on a group of craftsmen trying to come to grips with automation that threatens their livelihood and traditional way of life.

Ananta, a coppersmith, returns to his home town of Amritsar after having worked in the more industrialised cities of Bombay and Ahmedabad. Like most people of his craft, he has difficulty making a living as the introduction of machines is throwing the craftsmen out of work. The coppersmiths face both destitution and a break up of their whole society based on age-old traditions and customs.

Yet, Ananta can see both the utility and the inevitability of the machines and the need for the coppersmiths to band together so that power of the machine could offer a new life for those whom it threatens. But unsettled, tense and suspicious as the coppersmiths are, a spark of demagogy culminates in violence and wanton destruction which ends in sudden, unexpected tragedy.

The Big Heart is a memorable work. It is passionate, earthy and urgent. It’s also timeless in that it is an evocative story of the churn and roil that change and modernity always create in their wake. In Ananta, Mulk Raj Anand gives us an unforgettable character. He is virile and passionate, brave, strong and tender, of large appetites yet caring and generous of spirit. Though unlettered, Ananta intuitively grasps that the conflict created by the coming of the machines can only be resolved by a spirit of understanding and accommodation on all sides. Thus a big heart alone can help society meet the existential challenge that change throws up, especially for those less prepared for it. Equally, Anand draws a vivid portrait of the Punjab and its people — his language infused with the clamour, sights and smells of the land.



Reviews

'Mulk Raj Anand writes about the Indians much as Chekhov writes about the Russians, or Sean O'Faolain or Frank O'Connor write about the Irish. At the same time his manner is quite his own. Mr. Anand's writing has an attractive sensuous quality. He somehow charges his pages with heat, colour, scents (or smells). He has, most of all, the touch, the power that makes the writer great — he can give human weakness a dignity of its own.'  — Elizabeth Bowen, Tatler

'Mr. Anand's picture is real, comprehensive and subtle, and his gifts in all moods from farce to comedy, from pathos to tragedy, from the realistic to the poetic, are remarkable . . . . [He] has a marvellous power of evoking an immensely varied life as it bubbles in front of his eyes.'  — V. S. Pritchett, London Mercury

'The Big Heart . . . is remarkable for its intense concentration, its objective documentation, and its masterful creation of tragic situations, while observing the unities of time and place and action.'  — Dr A. V. Krishna Rao, Mysore

'The Big Heart is an example of technique and the knowledge of the heart perfectly blended . . . . The whole of this impressive work does not contain one phrase of slop . . . . The big heart is handled by a big head.'  — F. J. Brown in Life and Letters Today


Mulk Raj Anand

Mulk Raj Anand (1905-2004) was born in Peshawar and educated at the universities of Punjab and London. After earning his Ph.D. in Philosophy in 1929, Anand began writing notes for T. S. Eliot’s magazine Criterion as well as books on diverse subjects such as cooking and the arts. Recognition came with the publication of his first two novels, Untouchable (1935) and Coolie (1936). These were followed, among others, by his well-known trilogy The Village (1939), Across the Black Waters (1940) and The Sword and the Sickle (1942). By the time he returned to India in 1946, he was the best-known Indian writer abroad.

Making Bombay (now Mumbai) his home and centre of activity, Anand plunged with gusto into India’s cultural and social life. Writing remained, however, his main pre-occupation, and in 1953 he published Private Life of an Indian Prince — his finest literary achievement. In 1980 appeared his best non-fictional work, Conversations in Bloomsbury (revised ed. 2011) — a wide-ranging dialogue with T. S. Eliot, Aldous Huxley, Virginia Woolf and others. He also founded and edited the renowned Indian art magazine Marg, and worked ceaselessly on his monumental autobiographical fiction, The Seven Ages of Man.

A recipient of the Sahitya Akademi award, the Padma Bhushan and several honorary doctorates, Anand's complete papers are now housed in the National Archives of India in New Delhi.


Other Books by Mulk Raj Anand

Want to look for books in similar categories
Some recent books on related subjects
 
back | top