Includes tales from Iceland, Sudan, Palestine, Lebanon, Tibet, amongst others. This series contains volumes which include 20 to 30 tales, accompanied by an introduction and a historical overview which give readers insights into the culture, the folk literature, and the lives of the people in the region.

The Apprentice is a novel totally different in tone from all other novels and writings of Arun Joshi. The protagonist, Ratan Rathor, represents the quintessence Everyman — a contrast to other protagonists in so far as his intellectual level is much lower. An unsophisticated youth, jobless, he comes to the city in search of a career; unscrupulous and ready to prostitute himself for professional advancement. Seduced by materialistic values, he takes a bribe to clear a large lot of defective weapons. As a consequence, a brigadier, who is also his friend, has to desert his post and, to escape ignominy, commit suicide. A penitent Rathor, avoids confessing his guilt, but, tries to achieve redemption by cleaning the shoes of devotees, every morning, at a temple.

Coolie portrays the picaresque adventures of Munoo, a young boy forced to leave his hill village to fend for himself and discover the world. His journey takes him far from home to towns and cities, to Bombay and Simla, sweating as servant, factory-worker and rickshaw driver. It is a fight for survival that illuminates, with raw immediacy, the grim fate of the masses in pre-Partition India.

This work examines the work of six 20th-century Indian writers who experienced both the colonial and postcolonial waves in Indian culture, and have explored this theme in their writings in English. It reads the work of Sri Aurobindo, Mulk Raj Anand, Balachandra Rajan, Nissim Ezekiel, Arun Joshi, and Anita Desai, examining issues of representation and identity, colonial and post colonial India, gender, power, and imperialism under a post structuralist and sociohistorical lens.

“The Mahatma Misunderstood” studies the relationship between the production of novels in late-colonial India and nationalist agitation promoted by the Indian National Congress. The volume examines the process by which novelists who were critically engaged with Gandhian nationalism, and who saw both the potentials and the pitfalls of Gandhian political strategies, came to be seen as the Mahatma’s standard-bearers rather than his loyal opposition.