Across the Black Waters

Widely regarded as outstanding among the earlier novels of Mulk Raj Anand, this work has been translated into eleven European languages. Across the Black Waters is probably Anand's best novel since untouchable, for it exactly communicates the claustrophobic tension of men in the front line, the imminence of death, and the pervading sense of inevitability which is the source of Anand's anger, and at the same time, is at the root of so much Indian fiction. We never loose lose awareness that this is an Indian novel. Anand makes a universal statement about the nature of war apart from the particular tragedy of the Indian sepoys in Flanders in 1914. His descriptions of brutality match in compassion and outrage, and perhaps also in poetic flair, those of Wilfred Owen, Siegfried Sassoon, or David Jones.