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Darkness
Twelve stories of immigrants who navigate the ancestral past of India as they remake their lives—and themselves—in North America. These are stories of fluid and broken identities, discarded languages and deities, and the attempt to create bonds with a new community against the ever-present fear of failure and betrayal.
“The narrative of immigration,” Bharati Mukherjee once wrote, “is the epic narrative of this millennium.” Her stories and novels brilliantly add to that ongoing saga. In the story “The Lady from Lucknow,” a woman is pushed to the limit while wanting nothing more than to fit in. In “Hindus,” characters discover that breaking away from a culture has deep and unexpected costs. In “A Father,” the clash of cultures leads a man to an act of terrible violence. “How could he tell these bright, mocking women,” Mukherjee writes, “that in the darkness, he sensed invisible gods and snakes frolicked in the master bedroom, little white sparks of cosmic static crackled up the legs of his pajamas. Something was out there in the dark, something that could invent accidents and coincidences to remind mortals that even in Detroit they were no more than mortal.”
There is light in these stories as well. The collection’s closing story, “Courtly Vision,” brings to life the world within a Mughal miniature painting and describes a light charged with excitement to discover the immense intimacy of darkness. Readers will also discover that excitement, and the many gradations of darkness and light, throughout these pages from the mind of a master storyteller.
Darkness is part of Godine’s Nonpareil celebrating the joy of discovery with books bound to be classics.
“The narrative of immigration,” Bharati Mukherjee once wrote, “is the epic narrative of this millennium.” Her stories and novels brilliantly add to that ongoing saga. In the story “The Lady from Lucknow,” a woman is pushed to the limit while wanting nothing more than to fit in. In “Hindus,” characters discover that breaking away from a culture has deep and unexpected costs. In “A Father,” the clash of cultures leads a man to an act of terrible violence. “How could he tell these bright, mocking women,” Mukherjee writes, “that in the darkness, he sensed invisible gods and snakes frolicked in the master bedroom, little white sparks of cosmic static crackled up the legs of his pajamas. Something was out there in the dark, something that could invent accidents and coincidences to remind mortals that even in Detroit they were no more than mortal.”
There is light in these stories as well. The collection’s closing story, “Courtly Vision,” brings to life the world within a Mughal miniature painting and describes a light charged with excitement to discover the immense intimacy of darkness. Readers will also discover that excitement, and the many gradations of darkness and light, throughout these pages from the mind of a master storyteller.
Darkness is part of Godine’s Nonpareil celebrating the joy of discovery with books bound to be classics.
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First published March 22, 1985
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About the author
Bharati Mukherjee
47 books228 followersBharati Mukherjee was an Indian-born award winning American writer who explored the internal culture clashes of her immigrant characters in the award-winning collection The Middleman and Other Stories and in novels like Jasmine and Desirable Daughters.
Ms. Mukherjee, a native of Calcutta, attended schools in England, Switzerland and India, earned advanced degrees in creative writing in the United States and lived for more than a decade in Canada, affording her a wealth of experience in the modern realities of multiculturalism.
She earned a bachelor’s degree in English from the University of Calcutta in 1959 and a master’s degree from the University of Baroda, in Gujarat, in 1961. After sending six handwritten stories to the University of Iowa, she was accepted into the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where she studied with Philip Roth and Vance Bourjaily in her first year. She earned an M.F.A. in 1963 and a doctorate in comparative literature in 1969 at Iowa.
After years of short-term academic appointments, Ms. Mukherjee was hired in 1989 to teach postcolonial and world literature at the University of California, Berkeley.
Bharati Mukherjee died on Saturday, January 28, 2017 in Manhattan. She was 76.
Ms. Mukherjee, a native of Calcutta, attended schools in England, Switzerland and India, earned advanced degrees in creative writing in the United States and lived for more than a decade in Canada, affording her a wealth of experience in the modern realities of multiculturalism.
She earned a bachelor’s degree in English from the University of Calcutta in 1959 and a master’s degree from the University of Baroda, in Gujarat, in 1961. After sending six handwritten stories to the University of Iowa, she was accepted into the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where she studied with Philip Roth and Vance Bourjaily in her first year. She earned an M.F.A. in 1963 and a doctorate in comparative literature in 1969 at Iowa.
After years of short-term academic appointments, Ms. Mukherjee was hired in 1989 to teach postcolonial and world literature at the University of California, Berkeley.
Bharati Mukherjee died on Saturday, January 28, 2017 in Manhattan. She was 76.
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
July 14, 2018
This makes the third author I’ve read who speaks to the fictional experiences of immigrants from India, and what impresses me most about her stories are their starkness and unrelenting portrayal of darkness when examining and revealing unpleasant truths. As a result, some of the characters felt at times more like reactions than people, but I’m sure that’s part of the point Bharati Mukherjee is making. As such, it’s worth examining alongside other literature asking tough questions about identity, culture, and dignity. Overall, not a bad addition.
September 6, 2016
Beautifully written, terribly hard to read. Racism feels likes it is new or worsening because it's in the headlines and our Facebook feeds, but this 1985 book makes it clear how far we've come in simply acknowledging the pervasiveness of the idea that people can be categorized by their race, gender or skin colour, and that affluent white men form the top of the pyramid.
These are stories about the immigrant experience, but they also make it clear how much of the human story is universal.
These are stories about the immigrant experience, but they also make it clear how much of the human story is universal.
July 28, 2011
Collection of short stories. Excellent. She writes effortlessly it seems. The writing is smooth, flows well, good pace.
February 24, 2023
The 12, starkly realistic and fully realized short stories in Bharati Mukherjee’s Darkness incrementally tell of Indian immigrants reconciling an opportunity to make a fresh, upwardly mobile start with the hard knocks of being a stranger in a strange land. The characters’ inherent faith, cultural, and social mores are weighed against new frontiers in their search for footing. Their struggles concern what to maintain and what to shed in the face of family loyalty, racism, and ingrained tradition. In the interest of a bright future, the characters divest themselves of religious doctrine and caste systems that don’t migrate. They persevere in the search for identity as they chisel their way in a land of promise. In braving to push boundaries, they are made aware of their limits.
In this updated collection of classic short stories, the universally lauded Bharati Mukherjee writes in her 1992 author introduction, “I have joined imaginative forces with an anonymous, driven underclass of semi-assimilated Indians with sentimental attachments to a distant homeland but no real desire for permanent return.”
The characters in Darkness are of all ages and represent the immigrant experience from multiple points of view. Some are in arranged marriages, some are single, and some are divorced. The short stories portray characters in different settings. They differ in gender, background, faith, and occupation. Each impactful story is predicated on what it means to be a fish out of water.
That this powerful collection of timeless short stories is now back in print with Godine Nonpareil imprint is a gift to benefit Mukherjee devotees and new readers alike. Such literary luminaries as Amy Tan, Robert Olen Butler, and Joyce Carol Oates have written glowing endorsements of Indian American Canadian Bharati Mukherjee’s body of work, and this collection exemplifies the reason. Mukherjee lays bare the method behind her magic, when she writes fitting words for this collection in Darkness’s introduction: “For a writer, energy is aggression: urgency colliding with confidence. Suddenly, everything is possible. Excluded worlds are opened, secretive characters reveal themselves. The writing-self is somehow united with the universe.”
For readers, writers, immigrants, patriots, and expatriates the world over, Darkness by Bharati Mukherjee is a study in excellence of a short story’s highest achievement.
In this updated collection of classic short stories, the universally lauded Bharati Mukherjee writes in her 1992 author introduction, “I have joined imaginative forces with an anonymous, driven underclass of semi-assimilated Indians with sentimental attachments to a distant homeland but no real desire for permanent return.”
The characters in Darkness are of all ages and represent the immigrant experience from multiple points of view. Some are in arranged marriages, some are single, and some are divorced. The short stories portray characters in different settings. They differ in gender, background, faith, and occupation. Each impactful story is predicated on what it means to be a fish out of water.
That this powerful collection of timeless short stories is now back in print with Godine Nonpareil imprint is a gift to benefit Mukherjee devotees and new readers alike. Such literary luminaries as Amy Tan, Robert Olen Butler, and Joyce Carol Oates have written glowing endorsements of Indian American Canadian Bharati Mukherjee’s body of work, and this collection exemplifies the reason. Mukherjee lays bare the method behind her magic, when she writes fitting words for this collection in Darkness’s introduction: “For a writer, energy is aggression: urgency colliding with confidence. Suddenly, everything is possible. Excluded worlds are opened, secretive characters reveal themselves. The writing-self is somehow united with the universe.”
For readers, writers, immigrants, patriots, and expatriates the world over, Darkness by Bharati Mukherjee is a study in excellence of a short story’s highest achievement.
January 2, 2026
Great writing and unique stories but each story felt unfinished and I was left hoping for more.
January 22, 2016
Published in 1986, short story collection, kind of tired, old. The trials of immigrants has very much superseded the descriptions of Indians in Toronto back then, and Mukherjee doesn't manage (try?) to put the reader into the marrow of her characters. For that, Chitra Divakaruni, in Sister of My heart, surpasses anyone I've read in the recent past.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews