Novel
Untouchable
Mulk Raj Anand · 1935
Synopsis
From morning to evening, a single day in the life of Bakha, a young sweeper whose job is to clean the latrines of a small town in northern India. Handsome, proud and strong, he is nonetheless an untouchable, whom no one may brush against without being defiled. That day, he accidentally bumps into a man of high caste, who insults him and strikes him in front of the crowd; from one encounter and humiliation to the next, Bakha begins to look for a meaning in the condition into which he was born.
Context
The novel draws on the fate of one of the author's aunts, rejected by her family for having shared a meal with a Muslim woman. On Gandhi's advice, as he found its language too elaborate, he rewrote it at the Sabarmati ashram. Turned down by nineteen British publishers, it appeared in 1935 from Lawrence and Wishart, in London, with a preface by E. M. Forster that helped get it accepted by a public who thought the subject unclean. Penguin reissued it in 1940.
Who it is for
A short novel, in English, confined to a single day; its language is scattered with turns of phrase taken from Punjabi and Hindustani.
Prizes and reception
It established its author's reputation and is regarded as a landmark of Indian literature in English; reissued in Penguin Modern Classics.
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