The Outsider (Short Stories)

These stories, vivid and stirring, chronicle a variegated life of Indian milieu over half a century. The flesh- and-blood characters of the stories are drawn from different walks of life. They are poor folks of slums, broken-back middle class, firebrand new women, pirates of street politics and the quasi intellectuals. Preying upon the underdogs in ‘Leader of the Freebies’, the snob-world in the ‘Morning Brigade’, the mechanical morbidity in ‘Nothing Succeeds Like Success’ and the backed to the wall woman in ‘Then She Threw Up the Sponge’ where death is deliverance, are some repelling themes running through the stories. The title story, ‘The Outsider’ is a vibrant tale of a refugee from East Bengal after partition who battles since childhood against all odds as an outsider.