Phanishwarnath Renu

Phanishwarnath Renu (1921-77), is the author of the first anchalik upanyas (regional novel) Maila Anchal (1954) (The Soiled Border) in Hindi, which won the President’s Award for the best novel of the year in 1955. Despite his popularity among the English academia, Renu’s work is sorely under-represented in English, both in terms of his contemporary literary context and theoretical approaches like reception theory and global south studies. This volume presents a comprehensive companion to Renu studies, representing his complete repertoire through selections from his novels, stories, poems, and the lesser known literary reportages, essays, interviews, memoirs, letters and other writings. It discusses themes like re-creating the language of fiction; narratives in search of humanity; eloquent defiance in poetry; rural and community discourse with modern sensibilities; language of an indigenous culture; and, regionalism in language and form. Part of the ‘Writer in Context’ series, this book will be useful for scholars and researchers of Indian literature, Hindi literature, English literature, postcolonial studies, cultural studies, global south studies and translation studies.