Mulk Raj Anand

Born Dec. 12, 1905, in Peshawar. Indian writer and scholar. Writes in English. Graduated from the University of London in 1929; received Ph.D. from Punjabi University and became a professor there in 1962.

In 1936, together with Sajjad Zaheer, Anand organized the association of Progressive Indian Writers. He was a journalist during the Spanish Civil War and defended the cause of the Republicans (1937). In his early works, such as The Untouchable (1935) and The Village (1939), Anand described the abject life of the coolies, the untouchables, and the workers on the tea plantations. In novels and stories such as The Personal Life of an Indian Raja (1953), The Road (1961), and The Death of a Hero (1963), Anand denounced the vestiges of the colonial past, advocated the equality of all castes, and defended the rights of women. In his autobiographical dialogues Seven Summers (1951) and The Image of Dawn (1964), he depicted the making of a freedom-fighter. Anand’s works combine his own national tradition with features of the European and the Russian novel (for example, M. Gorky’s work). In his best novels, The Coolie (1936), The Sword and the Sickle (1942), and The Image of Dawn, he evidenced a tendency to socialist realism. He was awarded the International Peace Prize in 1953.