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Fair tree of the void: Stories
English (translation)
192 pages, Paperback
Published January 1, 1990
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About the author
Vilas Sarang
26 books11 followersOne of the most significant modernist writer in Marathi writer and English, Vilas Sarang has written remarkable short stories, poems, a novel and also brilliant pieces of criticism in his first language Marathi as well as in English. His Marathi short story collections are 'Soledad' (1975) and 'Atank' (1999) and translations of his stories in English are collected in 'A Fair Tree of the Void' (1990) and more recently `The Women in the Cages' (2006). A selection of his short stories also appeared in French translation in 1988. His English novel 'The Dinosaur Ship'(2005) and his Marathi novel is `Enkichya Rajyat'. His Marathi collection of poems is published under the title Kavita 1969-1984 and his collection of English poems is published as 'A Kind of Silence'(1978) and recently he has brought out ` Another Life'. He has also written significant criticism in Marathi 'Sisyphus ani Bolakka' and 'Aksharanchya Shrama Kela'(2000).He has also published The Stylistics of Literary Translation ( 1988 ) and edited the anthology Indian English Poetry Since 1950 ( 1989. He has also edited reputed literary journals like the Bombay Review and The Post Post Review.
He holds a Ph. D. in English from Bombay University and another in comparative literature from Indiana University. He taught at the University of Basra in Iraq during the 1970s, became Professor of English and Chair of the Department of English at Bombay University in the eighties, and he has also taught at Kuwait University. He lives in Mumbai
The quest for primitive source of human existence is an important feature of his writings. His short stories are often surreal and have often been compared to Kafka. For instance, in one of his stories collected in The Women in Cages, the narrator finds himself transformed into a gigantic phallus. In another more well known story, a person named Chako is marooned on an island where women have either upper half of their bodies or the lower half. Sarang is awovedly anti-representational modernist in his aesthetics and provides a refreshing alternative to over-hyped `diaspora' and `exiled' non-resident Indian English writers like Salman Rushdie, VS Naipaul and Kiran Desai.
He holds a Ph. D. in English from Bombay University and another in comparative literature from Indiana University. He taught at the University of Basra in Iraq during the 1970s, became Professor of English and Chair of the Department of English at Bombay University in the eighties, and he has also taught at Kuwait University. He lives in Mumbai
The quest for primitive source of human existence is an important feature of his writings. His short stories are often surreal and have often been compared to Kafka. For instance, in one of his stories collected in The Women in Cages, the narrator finds himself transformed into a gigantic phallus. In another more well known story, a person named Chako is marooned on an island where women have either upper half of their bodies or the lower half. Sarang is awovedly anti-representational modernist in his aesthetics and provides a refreshing alternative to over-hyped `diaspora' and `exiled' non-resident Indian English writers like Salman Rushdie, VS Naipaul and Kiran Desai.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
July 10, 2024
Vilas Sarang is an Indian writer who flaunts an obvious Kafka affection in his twenty stories collected in the book 'Fair Tree of the Void'.
Sarang is a writer who writes in both Marathi and English. This book is a collection of stories that's translated from Marathi. The stories extrapolate Kafkaesque landscapes to urban India, where the stories' protagonists are trapped in labyrinths created in distinctly Indian settings. One could also find a clear influence of Albert Camus in the stories, as most of them explore the absurdities of modern life to which humans are so accustomed that they tend to ignore them.
Read the full review here
Sarang is a writer who writes in both Marathi and English. This book is a collection of stories that's translated from Marathi. The stories extrapolate Kafkaesque landscapes to urban India, where the stories' protagonists are trapped in labyrinths created in distinctly Indian settings. One could also find a clear influence of Albert Camus in the stories, as most of them explore the absurdities of modern life to which humans are so accustomed that they tend to ignore them.
Read the full review here
January 3, 2008
Stories written originally in Marathi or English, most of which would easily draw comparisons to "fantastic" European writers, such as Franz Kafka, rather than any popular Indian writer that I can think of.
There's a story in here, somewhat in the mold of "The Metamorphosis," about a man who wakes one day to find that he is an enormous penis. Anyone who's read Dubravka Ugrešić undoubtedly remembers her take on Gogol's "The Nose," which, of course, has somebody finding a dick in a hot dog, rather than a nose in a roll.
I mention all this in case somebody needs an idea for a short story anthology.
There's a story in here, somewhat in the mold of "The Metamorphosis," about a man who wakes one day to find that he is an enormous penis. Anyone who's read Dubravka Ugrešić undoubtedly remembers her take on Gogol's "The Nose," which, of course, has somebody finding a dick in a hot dog, rather than a nose in a roll.
I mention all this in case somebody needs an idea for a short story anthology.
September 20, 2008
Sarang's short, multi-layered and consummately bleak stories can be compared to Kafka and Beckett in spirit, and sometimes to Borges in form. He weaves together fragments of the social realism that dominates Indian literature with a surrealist instinct for subverting forms and symbols to unravel the haunted depths they conceal and an existential knowledge of despair. He's almost unique in modern Indian fiction - the closest parallel I can think of is Lucknow's Naiyer Masud.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews