Description
Book SynopsisA translation of a 1927 short-story collection that was the first work of Hindi fiction to focus on male same-sex relations; its publication sparked Indias first public debates about homosexuality.
Trade Review“Vanita’s introduction and translated stories will be useful to anyone interested in same-sex love and the intersections of homophobia and nationalism in India. [S]he provides a valuable interpretation of the stories and Ugra’s ambivalent stance on homosexuality. The stories could be read alone, but Vanita’s contextualization is critical for understanding the debate around homosexuality in India and thus the significance of
Chocolate.” - Lisa I. Knight,
International Journal of Hindu Studies“A resplendent translation of an underground classic on a subject—homosexual desire – that still remains largely confined to the closet in India. Ruth Vanita has done an admirable service to Indian literature by giving this important work of Hindi fiction another life through her translation and a luminous introduction that brings out the ambiguities of the text and the ambivalences of its path-breaking author. A rare book that will delight and enlighten the common as well as the scholarly reader.”—
Krishna Baldev Vaid, Hindi novelist
“This book is an extraordinarily valuable resource on sexuality. Ruth Vanita’s translations of ‘Ugra’ are fluid and comfortable (no small feat when one is translating from colloquial Hindi); her introduction is well researched, thoroughly documented, and written in lovely style; and her arguments are subtle and replete with enough material to introduce South Asia to a novice and to keep the attention of a reader well versed in the region.”—
Geeta Patel, author of
Lyrical Movements, Historical Hauntings: On Gender, Colonialism, and Desire in Miraji’s Urdu Poetry“Vanita’s introduction and translated stories will be useful to anyone interested in same-sex love and the intersections of homophobia and nationalism in India. [S]he provides a valuable interpretation of the stories and Ugra’s ambivalent stance on homosexuality. The stories could be read alone, but Vanita’s contextualization is critical for understanding the debate around homosexuality in India and thus the significance of
Chocolate.” -- Lisa I. Knight * International Journal of Hindu Studies *
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments ix
Note on This Translation xi
Introduction xv
Original Prefatory Materials 1
Chocolate 11
Kept Boy 19
We Are In Love with Lucknow 30
Waist Curved Like a She-Cobra 37
Discussing Chocolate 47
O Beautiful Young Man 52
Dissolute Love 58
In Prison 67
From
Letters of Some Beautiful Ones 73
