A Faceless Evening and Other Stories: Short Stories: Ratna Translation

GANGADHAR GADGIL (1923-2008), writer, economist and teacher, received the Sahitya Akademi award in 1996 for his autobiographical work Eka Mungiche Mahabharat (An Ant's Mahabharat). He wrote novels, plays, travelogues and a large number of stories. He was one of the pioneers who ushered in a new era in the art of the short story in Marathi literature during the 1950s and 1960s. His craft breaks fresh ground in the structure, theme and narrative of storytelling in that his stories do not follow the largely romanticized vision of life. Rather, they deal with day-to-day situations faced by the urban middle-class and its efforts to cope with them. He treats his characters with empathy, making them likeable if not always admirable. His narrative style differs from story to story, and is rich with unorthodox imagery.