Great Telugu Short Stories Volume 2 (1948-1970) - A Collection of Some of the Finest Telugu Short Stories

This is an anthology of 35 short stories penned by 17 great Telugu writers and first published between 1948 and 1970. Translated into English for a global audience by Rayasam Srinivas Rao as part of his ongoing effort to translate a hundred stories published between 1910 and 1990. This volume follows volume 1, which contains English translations of 25 of the finest Telugu short stories published between 1910 (the inception of the short story) and 1947 (Indian Independence). All the original authors in this volume have a special place in the annals of Telugu literature for their contributions. Many of them have won national and state recognition through Sahitya Akademi awards. By the 1950s, the Telugu short story acquired technical sophistication and international recognition. Palagummi Padmaraju’s ’Gaalivaana’ (translated as The Tempest in this volume) won the second prize in an international competition held by the New York Herald Tribune in 1952. The stories in this volume will expose the reader to the extraordinary creative ability of the Telugu writers and will also give them a glimpse of the varied topics the writers touched upon. The internal problems of the newly independent and diverse Indian society. Middleclass themes, social evils, the exploitation of the poor by the moneyed class, the oppressive practice of untouchability and other kinds of caste discrimination, corruption, drought, famine, the movement of rural population to urban areas, and discrimination against women- offered a great wealth and variety of topics for the short stories by gifted creative writers. The stories presented in this volume capture all the themes, movements and trends that have swept across the Telugu land in the post-independence era, such as socialism, communism, feminism, the civil rights movement, and the Dalit movement. This rich set of stories represents the lives of Telugu people, including the urban and rural upper middle class, the middle class, the downtrodden, professionals, and beggars. These stories try to appeal to the global reader while retaining the original Telugu cultural nuances as much as possible.