DAY OF RECKONING

Even before Indian writing in English became the fashionable thing it is today, Nayantara Sahgal was a name to reckon with internationally. In Day of Reckoning: Stories, her first collection of short stories, one finds a familiar engagement with society, human rights and politics, and a Sahgalesque subversive take on tradition. A foreign journalist tries to make sense of a rapidly changing India even as a leading political leader is assassinated in public; a Naxalite who believes in scientific killing of the class enemy and the cult of violence is shattered when it boomerangs on him; a favourite aunt assigned the task of getting her young nephew back to India from London for an arranged marriage finds more than she had bargained for. This is a thought-provoking, yet disturbing collection of stories from a master storyteller. Brimming with rare insights on the human condition and informed by the changing political and cultural ambience of the nation, Day of Reckoning is a must-have addition to every library.