An editors' list
Hindi prose has a founder in a way most literatures do not, and arguing with him has been a full-time occupation ever since. Start with the three Premchands and then the poem every Hindi schoolchild has had to memorise.
4 books
Munshi Premchand · 1999 · Hindi
Premchand's last completed novel and the one usually called his best: a peasant who wants one cow, and an economy arranged to ensure he does not get it. The book that made social realism the default setting of Hindi fiction.
Munshi Premchand · 2002 · Hindi
A clerk, his wife, some borrowed money and a piece of jewellery. Premchand was extremely good at the small compromise that turns out to be the whole life.
Munshi Premchand · 1987 · Hindi
The short story people fight about — two men who will not bury the dead woman in the house, and Premchand refusing to tell you what to think about them. Under twenty pages and it has been argued over for ninety years.
Ramdhari Singh Dinkar · 2009 · Hindi
Ramdhari Singh Dinkar's verse retelling of Karna, the Mahabharata's most useful character for anyone who wants to talk about merit and birth without saying so directly.
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