In a vast country like India, where great regional differences in culture and behaviour obtain, and the various languages retain their exclusive origins and identities, it is not possible to maintain a complete and continuous communication between different parts of the country on a national scale. There cannot be a truly meaningful awareness of the country's total literary activity and output without such intercommunication through the medium of translation. Translations of some of the better known works of Indian literary giants like Tagore, Premchand and others have been successfully undertaken and their writings have been read and enjoyed in all parts of India. There has, however, been no systematic endeavour to take up the important works of each region and present them in a widely understood language.
Fusion Books has planned the publication of a series of anthologies of English translations of modern short stories written in the different Indian languages, with the aim of bringing the people of India closer and making Indian literature available in other parts of the world. The task of selecting, editing and translating the stories has been entrusted to competent writers and critics and the series, when complete, will present a full picture of the contemporary short story in India.
No perfect definition of the short story as a genre of literature has yet been written. I can hardly claim that the one that I am attempting, will not be faulted by critics. Yet, I must write one here, not so much with the object of providing a definition as to suggest a frame of reference, with which could be checked the stories that find a place in this volume and others which have been excluded.
I must resist the temptation to state my definition at the beginning. I prefer the more workable approach of first discussing the stories that I have selected for this volume. From this discussion, I propose to derive a set of principles which will define a short story. I would be content, at this stage, to state a general proposition that the short story has undergone a sea change since it first came to be written in the Punjabi Language. From a well-made story, with a beginning, a middle and an end, it has over the years, metamorphosed into an amorphous form, may be a sketch of a situation or a character, an essay, or a purposeful literary exercise in prose. All this goes by the omnibus name of 'short fiction'. Increasingly, the literary journals all over the world are showing a marked preference for this description rather than 'short story'. In fact, Jaswant Singh Kanwal's story "A Martyr's Body Never Tells a Lie" is a chapter from his novel "The Glow of Blood'. It is a perfect short story by itself.
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