Kulturka

Untouchable

In Mulk Raj Anand`s finest and most controversial novel he conveys precisely, with urgency and barely disguised fury, what it might feel like to be one of India`s Untouchables. Bakha is a young man, a proud and even an attractive young man, but none the less he is an outcast in a system that is now only slowly changing and was then as cruel and debilitating as that of apartheid. Into this re-c reation of one day in the life of Bakha, sweeper and latrine-cleaner, Anand poured a vitality, fire and richness of detail that have caused him to be acclaimed as his country`s Charles Dickens as well as this century`s greatest revealer of the `other` India.

• author: Mulk Raj Anand