About Premchand and Prasenjit Gupta

About Premchand

Premchand (1880-1936) is so well known to readers of Indian literature that any introduction seems superfluous. He stands at the head of the canon of both modern Urdu and Hindi fiction, categories which he all but single-handedly created and which he populated with some of its most enduring and influential work. Readers in English are perhaps most familiar with his major novels, such as Godaan, Gaban and Nirmala, and with his reputation as a social realist and a writer preoccupied with the peasantry of the Hindi belt and with issues of social reform. While this reputation is well deserved (though the whiff of stodginess about it is not) it masks the larger range of Premchand's style and temperament. The stories translated here display the lesser known Premchand: the writer of comedy and sharp social satire. The text of "Rasik Sampaadak", translated here as "Dear Editor", is taken from Mansarovar Vol. 1 and the text of "Motar Ke Chhiten", translated here as "Splashed!", is taken from Mansarovar Vol. 2. We would be grateful to Premchand scholars and readers for more information on the original publication histories of these stories.

Read "Dear Editor" here.
Read "Splashed!" here.

Discuss the stories and translations here.

About Prasenjit Gupta

Prasenjit Gupta, currently based in Chennai, is a graduate of the University of Delhi, IIM Kolkata, and the Iowa Writers' Workshop. A former Fulbright scholar, he writes fiction in English and translates fiction and poetry from Hindi and Bengali into English. His short stories have appeared in A Brown Man and Other Stories and his translations of several of Nirmal Verma's stories in Indian Errant: Short Stories by Nirmal Verma. Some of his translations from Bengali are available at Parabaas. He has received an NEA fellowship to support the translation of a collection of Ashapurna Debi's short fiction, to be called "Brahma's Weapon and Other Stories."

Another Subcontinent published "The Happy Life", Prasenjit's translation of Chandradhar Sharma Guleri's short story, "Sukhmay Jivan", in the summer of 2005.

(Biographical notes by Arnab Chakladar and Prasenjit Gupta. Digital rendering of the author's image on front-page by Arnab Chakladar.)


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