The World of Premchand: Selected Short Stories

Premchand's novels and short stories dealing with the quotidian lives of everyday heroes have attained the status of classics today. It was he who, by the thirties, had established the realistic psychological novel in these languages and set the standard as well as the social themes and character studies that typified the accomplished fiction by the younger writers who followed. The inhumanity of caste hierarchies and the plight of women stirred his indignation and remained constant themes throughout his work. The romantic heroism of the earliest tales is later supplanted by realistic studies of character and an idealistic view of the agitation against British oppression, with cutting satire of those Indians (as in "A Little Trick" and "A Moral Victory") who set their personal interests above the freedom movement. The range of the later fiction expands beyond the village to an India changing in what one of his characters calls "the new light," young intellectuals and emancipated women, with problems very different from those of uneducated villagers. "The Chess Players" (1924), probably the most famous of all Premchand's short stories, set in Lucknow at the time of the British annexation, portrays in terms of absurdist tragedy the moral vacuity and madness of the city's aristocracy in counterpoint against the background of a historical crisis. Stories like "A Day in the Life of a Debt Collector" and "A Car Splashing" might well be considered scenes from village life, though it seems that there is a certain urban sensibility in both, and in one the very presence of the automobile suggests the larger sphere of the town. The stories in the third division are more involved with problems of individuality and growing awareness, while "The Shroud" and "Deliverance," though very clearly village stories, transcend the limitations of the earlier rural tales and attain to a greater universality of statement.

Table of Contents:
1. THE VILLAGE: THE ROAD TO SALVATION, A FEAST FOR THE HOLY MAN, THE POWER OF A CURSE, A CATASTROPHE, JANUARY NIGHT, NEYUR, THE STORY OF TWO BULLOCKS, RAMLILA, THE THAKUR'S WELL, A DESPERATE CASE ; 2. THE TOWN: A DAY IN THE LIFE OF A DEBT-COLLECTOR, A CAR-SPLASHING, FROM BOTH SIDES, A MORAL VICTORY, MAN'S HIGHEST DUTY, A LESSON IN THE HOLY LIFE, A LITTLE TRICK, PENALTY, THE WRITER, A COWARD ; 3. THE WORLD: A SERVANT OF THE NATION, THE CHESS PLAYERS, THE ROAD TO HELL, MISS PADMA, MY BIG BROTHER, INTOXICATION, THE PRICE OF MILK, THE SHROUD, DELIVERANCE, TWO AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES; NOTES TO THE STORIES