Navagat Peerhi

The history of the Hindi short story is over 112 years old now. Veteran critic and writer Dr. Pushppal Singh has made a selection of stories representative of the historical context that informed the themes and styles of the noteworthy writers of the time. The series is divided into six volumes, with stories starting as early as 1900. An entire volume is dedicated to the star women writers such as Mrinal Pande, Indu Bali, Kavita, Pratyaksha, Maitrayi Pushpa and Sudha Arora of the last fifty years. So while you begin with stalwarts like Madhav Rao Sapre, Nizam Shah and Acharya Ramchandra Shukla in the first volume, you go on to Jayshankar Prasad and Premchand, Yashpal, Bhagwaticharan Verma, Nirala, Amritlal Nagar, Agyeya and Ashk in the second. The third volume presents you with the ‘Nayi Kahani’ writers like Kamleshwar, Renu, Nirmal Verma, Krishna Sobti, Bharati, Rajendra Yadav, even Doodhnath Singh. The fourth volume brings us to the ‘Samkaleen Kahani’ with stories by Giriraj Kishore, Uday Prakash, Kashinath Singh, Govind Mishra, Gyanranjan and Hridayesh. The last volume acknowledges young talents such as Ajay Navaria, Kunal Singh, Prabhat Ranjan and Tejendra Sharma. This is a very important series of anthologies for anyone who wants to say he’s read all Hindi short story writers worth their salt.