Untouchable - (Penguin Classics) by Mulk Raj Anand (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

Mulk Raj Anand's extraordinarily powerful story of an Untouchable in India's caste system, with a new introduction by Ramachandra Guha, author of Gandhi

Bakha is a proud and attractive young man, yet none the less he is an Untouchable - an outcast in India's caste system. It is a system that is even now only slowly changing and was then as cruel and debilitating as that of apartheid. Into this vivid re-creation of one day in the life of Bakha, sweeper and toilet-cleaner, Anand pours a vitality, fire and richness of detail that earn his place as one of the twentieth century's most important Indian writers.

'One of the most eloquent and imaginative works to deal with this difficult and emotive subject' Martin Seymour-Smith

'It recalled to me very vividly the occasions I have walked 'the wrong way' in an Indian city, and it is a way down which no novelist has yet taken me' E. M. Forster

About the Author

Mulk Raj Anand (1905-2004) was among the most highly regarded Indian novelists who wrote in English. Born in Peshawar, he lived in England for many years before settling in a village in Western India after World War II.

Ramachandra Guha is the author of a forthcoming two-volume biography of Gandhi and is a professor at the London School of Economics and Political Science.