fहndi - Mahatma Gandhi Antarrashtriya Hindi Vishwavidyalaya

Auschwitz that he had personallyexperienced as an inmate. If Gao Xingjianwas being distanced by the communistsbecause of ideological differences, Kerteszwas paying the price for being a Jew. Butthe work of neither of them is altogetherlimited to the terrible life experiences theyhad to undergo. On the contrary, treatingthese experiences as mere manifestationsof the basic human nature, they rise beyondthe cesspits of those experiences andbecome precious documentations of art andliterature in the form of Fateless and SoulMountain. Every writer selected heredisplays in his writings faith and a positiveattitude towards life in the middle ofconditions of wretchedness and darkness.While painting the canvas of thewriter's creativity, thought and artisticuniqueness on the basis of their Nobellectures, Vijay Sharma proceeds with thedrive and enthusiasm of an eager guide.Through her thorough research and effortsshe does address those aspects of the writerand his work that may generally beunknown to the common Hindi reader;but more importantly, going further, shepresents to us the heart of the creativeimpulses in the writer and the innermostmessages of his writing, drawing these outfrom details of his personal life. She alsorelates writers to one another, thus helpingthe reader understand them more deeply.For instance, she relates Naipaul's tendencyto shy away from public speeches to whatProust said about a writer being the ownerof two different personalities. In the sameway, while speaking of Czeslaw Milosz, shepoints out how there is similarity ofthoughts between him and GiordanoBruno; while speaking of Singer, she pointsout how he and Oswald Spengler sharethe lifestyles of cultures; and speaking ofToni Morrison, she brings up Nat Turnerand the first slave revolt in America led byhim. These cross references add to the easewith which her purports could becomprehended.In her analysis of the authors, VijaySharma speaks about what their early lifewas like, what the financial conditions athome were, how they began to write, whatincidents and what books influenced them,and what their inspirations were. She givesus lots of minor but fascinating detailsrelated to the way creativity finds expressionin each of them [for instance GaoXingjian's way of drawing with ink, GunterGrass's way of reading with fingers pluggedinto his ears, Singer's love for feedingpigeons], discusses the difficulties eachexperienced in getting their bookspublished, what fame means to each ofthem, the unique shades of each writer'slanguage, the roles and limitations ofliterature in our times when the marketand consumerism dominate the world andso on. These discussions are among therich aspects of Vijay Sharma's work,reflecting her commitment to her work.At a time when systems are beingglobalised and along with that a new worldis emerging as a powerful reality in whichall aspects of life on the planet arebecoming more and more complex, it ishoped that this rich book that gives usfgndi •April-June 2013 :: 157