In January 1996 Upendranath Ashk, the well known and controversial Hindi author passed away at the age of eighty six. Ashk left behind him a phenomenally large oeuvre, comprising over a hundred volumes of fiction, poetry, memoir, criticism and translation. The career of this prolific writer had begun in the early thirties and spanned a momentous sixty year period, which saw tremendous social and political change in India. Ashk’s work distinguished itself not just for its abundance but for its originality and difference from the work of his contemporaries. Bully. Outsider. Iconoclast. Villian. Antagonist. Misfit – this is how the Hindi literary world perceives Upendranath Ashk. In this powerful biography, Daisy Rockwell presents the many faces of the writer and his tumultuous life and times, unfolding in the process, the period, the literary history of Hindi and the Hindi-Urdu divide. She also traces the development of Modern Standard Hindi, participants in its evolution and Ashk’s role in it.
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