Best of Premchand

Master story-teller Premchand was also the principal initiator of the modern trend and style of short story writing in Hindi and Urdu. His real name was Dhanpat Rai Srivastava, and he was a school teacher in Uttar Pradesh. He first wrote in Urdu under the penname of Navab Rai. When his first ever story considered seditious by British authority led to a warning by the District Collector and order that he take prior permission before writing, he wrote under the abbreviated form “”DA””, as “Afsana Kuhn” and, from 1910 onwards, on the advice of his editor friend Daya Narayan Nigam, under the penname which is today internationally known. In response to the call of Mahatma Gandhi, he resigned his job as sub-inspector of schools and made writing his whole-time occupation.
During his literary career spanning more than three decades, he wrote, apart from a dozen novels-for which he is called Upanyas Samrat-nearly 300 stories which have been published in a dozen anthologies in Hindi. (These include the 200 stories published in Urdu anthologies).
This anthology of fifty specially selected short stories include those which Premchand thought were his best.
An unusual feature of this anthology is the order of the short stories from his first to his last short story, giving not only the year of the story’s first publication but also the captions of the stories in Hindi and Urdu. The stories also project the change from the Persian dominated imagery to the language of everyday use, and thus the development of Premchand as a writer.
As would be seen, Premchand, starting with stories inspired by the call for Swaraj, switched over to theme of bravery and chivalry of the Rajputs and Bundelas and of such social evils as child or unbalanced marriages, hostility to the girl child, dowry, exploitation of peasantry by the Zamindars, bureaucrats and the priestly class, and of the Harijans and underprivileged sections of society, of the movement for national liberation. Here are stories wherein we hear the voices of prabhat pheris, of martyrdom, of the committed youth, of Satyagraha and of demonstrations against repressive laws promulgated by the British.