Product Description
Premchand is the most famous name in modern Hindi fiction, and Godaan is Premchand's most celebrated novel. It is the story of Hori, a poor peasant who yearns to own a cow and to make the pious Hindu's traditional gift to a Brahmin when he dies. Through Premchand's vivid character portrayals we witness the efforts of Hori's family to survive the conflicts of village politics and the webs spun by colonial landownership patterns. Counterposed to the culture of rural connectedness but also constriction is the isolation but also freedom of the city. Here the rigors of industrialization and empty materialism only can be offset by the promise of Gandhian idealism. An engaging introduction to north India before Independence, Godaan is at once village ethnography, moving human document, and insightful colonial history.
About the Author
Premchand was the pseudonym of Dhanpat Rai, who was born in Banaras in 1880 and died a few months after the publication of Godaan in 1936. He began writing while teaching at a government school, and adopted this pen name after his first book of short stories was labeled inflammatory and burned by the British government. His other works include Sevesadan, Nirmala, and many short stories.
Gordon C. Roadarmel (1932-1972) was Assistant Professor of South and Southeast Asian Studies, University of California, Berkeley. In addition to The Gift of a Cow, he published a path breaking translation of Hindi short stories, A Death in Delhi: Modern Hindi Short Stories.
Vasudha Dalmia is Professor of Hindi and Chair of the department of South and Southeast Asian Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. She is author of The Nationalization of Hindu Traditions: Bharatendu Harischandra and Nineteenth Century Banaras, co-editor of Representing Hinduism: The Construction of Religious Traditions and National Identity, and co-author of Myths, Saints, and Legends in Medieval India.
