Author: Makarand Paranjape
Publisher: UBS Publishers
Year: 1994
Language: English
Pages: 134
ISBN/UPC (if available): 8154944466
Description
A collection of 17 short stories by a well-known author and columnist.
The title of this collection comes not from a story, as is the usual practice, but from a story within a story. Perhaps this is symbolic of the way this entire collection works. There is a deliberate subversion of expectations here, a rupture of conventions which it not angry or defiant but playful and clever. There is, thus, a self-consciousness to these stories as if the writer were sitting in front of a mirror while writing them.
A number of stories are somewhat metafictional; that is, they are stories about writing stories. This concern, even preoccupation with the nature of the creative process itself is recognized as a key feature of post-modernism. There are also related stories about the relationship between fact and fiction, writing and gender, growing up and maturing, and about transforming encounters between the self and the other. Finally, there are love stories too - or at any rate - stories in which people struggle and often fail to come closer to one another.