In accordance with our meta agreement to have topic challenges and a later meta agreement to have topic challenges lasting for two months and overlapping by one month, it is time to announce the August–September 2021 topic challenge.
Based on the number of votes (+4, resulting in a four-way tie) and our rules for selecting a topic challenge among those that have the same number of votes, the next topic challenge will be
Munshi Premchand (Dhanpat Rai Shrivastava)
(In the old suggestions thread, Munschi Premchand was suggested before Maltese literature.)
What's a topic challenge?
See the meta posts linked above, and also this main Meta post. In short, during August and September 2021 you are invited to try to get hold of one of the works of Munshi Premchand and ask questions about it.
Participation is not obligatory in any sense, and questions on other works are more than welcome during August and September too; they just won't count as part of this topic challenge.
How can I take part?
By getting hold of one of the works of Munshi Premchand and asking good questions about it. Questions about these works should be tagged with premchand, urdu-literature for works originally written in Urdu (before 1914) or hindi-literature for works originally written in Hindi (starting in 1914), and a tag for the work (if it is a book-length work). We'll keep a list of all such questions in an answer to this meta post.
Below is Tsundoku's presentation:
Since this site needs more questions about non-Western literature, I'm submitting a proposal for one of the most important 20th-century authors from India. Munshi Premchand (1880 – 1936) is not well known in the West, even though he "is regarded as one of the foremost Hindi writers of the early twentieth century" (Wikipedia). He published novels, short stories and plays; not all of them have been translated into English.
- His first major novel, Bazaar-e-Husn, (1924) was translated into English as Sevasadan (Oxford University Press, 2005).
- Nirmala (1927) was translated into English in 2001 (Oxford University Press).
- Gaban (1931) was translated as Gaban: The Stolen Jewels (Oxford University Press, 2002).
- The novel Karmabhoomi (1932) was translated as Karmabhumi (Oxford University Press, 2008).
- The novel Godaan (1936) was translated into English as The Gift of a Cow, into French as Godan: Le don d'une vache (L'Hermattan, 2006) and into German as Godan oder die Opfergabe (Manesse, 1979, where the author is identified as Premacanda).
- Penguin Books India published The Complete Short Stories in four volumes in 2017 (but none of his other works).
- For a selection of short stories, see The Illustrated Premchand: Selected Short Stories (Oxford University Press, 2006).
Some of these translations were published on the occasion of the 125th anniversary of Premchand's birth or shortly thereafter. There are also a few German translations.
A monograph by Madan Gopal, published in 1944, is now available on Archive.org.
What's next?
- Vote for the next topic challenge (September–October), or propose your own!
