This anthology consisting of twenty seven short stories by both elder and younger writers, presents a cross-section of the best creative work done, in our time, in this genre by Gujarati writers. Of the 32 writers represented here 6 are recipients of the Sahitya Akademi Award, one has been awarded Padmashree and seven have won gold medals—and the rest have been accorded prestigious literary awards and accolades. The volume provides delectable and enlightening fare to the discerning readers in general and precious wealth to the aesthetes of the short story, literatures, critics and scholars in India and abroad by giving glimpse of the Indian genius engaged in the field of short fiction today. The stories confront the basic existential issues and limn the imperishable pan-Indian values, cultural ethos, and modern sensibility. In its many-fold mutations and leaching out in many directions to embrace different techniques, narrative strategies and thematic interests, the stories manifest, in modern spirit, a sense of contemporaneity, ineluctability of situation, event, mood, obsession, character, and psychological concern. Each story stands by itself as an aesthetic entity with illuminating power altering our old notions of style and artistic convention, of the pre-established parameters of the Indian short story, and of the short story abroad.
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