RAG Demo

Tag: 1920s

  • The Story of My Experiments with Truth

    Gandhi wrote his autobiography in Gujarati as weekly instalments in his journal Navajivan between 1925 and 1929, and his secretary Mahadev Desai translated it into English. It covers his life from childhood in Porbandar and Rajkot to about 1921, and Gandhi presents it not as a political history but as an account of his spiritual and moral experiments.

    He describes, with striking frankness, his child marriage, adolescent rebellions, guilt over his father's death, student years in London grappling with vegetarianism and English manners, and his faltering start as a lawyer. In South Africa, being thrown off a train becomes the turning point that leads to his community work, the Phoenix settlement, Tolstoy Farm and the first satyagraha campaigns against discriminatory laws.

    The final sections cover his return to India, the Champaran and Kheda struggles and the Ahmedabad mill strike. Throughout, Gandhi experiments with diet, celibacy, nursing, simple living and religious ideas, and he records failures as readily as successes. The book is essential for understanding the man behind the movement, including views that later readers find troubling.

    Book details

    AuthorMahatma Gandhi
    First published1927
    Original languageGujarati
    Translated byMahadev Desai
    GenreMemoir
    TypeNon-fiction
    Pages (approx.)450
    SettingPorbandar, Rajkot, London, South Africa and India, 1869-1921

    Themes

    • Truth
    • Non-violence
    • Self-discipline
    • Spiritual experimentation
    • Racial injustice

    Who should read it

    Anyone who wants Gandhi's own account of how his ideas formed, in his own humble and searching voice.

  • Pather Panchali

    Pather Panchali, published in 1929, is set in Nischindipur, a village in rural Bengal. Harihar Ray is a poor priest and would-be writer who drifts in search of work, leaving his wife Sarbajaya to stretch scraps into meals and to keep up appearances among better-off neighbours. Living with them is Indir Thakrun, an aged and dependent relative whose presence the harried mother resents.

    The heart of the book is the childhood of Apu and his elder sister Durga, who roam orchards and bamboo groves, steal fruit, watch a travelling theatre troupe and dream of seeing a train. Bibhutibhushan renders the natural world, the seasons and the small events of village life with unusual tenderness, so that poverty and wonder exist side by side on almost every page.

    There is little conventional plot; the novel moves by episodes and moods. Its achievement is to make an obscure family's struggles feel universal without romanticising hardship. Satyajit Ray's 1955 film adapted the first part, and with its sequel Aparajito the book forms the basis of the celebrated Apu trilogy. It remains a cornerstone of modern Bengali prose.

    Book details

    AuthorBibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay
    First published1929
    Original languageBengali
    Translated byT. W. Clark and Tarapada Mukherji
    GenreClassic
    TypeFiction
    Pages (approx.)320
    SettingNischindipur village, rural Bengal, early twentieth century

    Themes

    • Childhood
    • Rural poverty
    • Nature
    • Sibling bond
    • Wonder and loss

    Who should read it

    Readers who love gentle, observant novels of childhood and village life, and admirers of Satyajit Ray's Apu trilogy.

  • Nirmala

    Nirmala is a teenage girl whose engagement collapses after her father's death leaves the family unable to pay the expected dowry. Her mother arranges a match with Totaram, a lawyer about twice her age with three sons from his first marriage, and Nirmala enters his household as a wife barely older than his eldest son, Mansaram.

    Totaram, insecure about his age, grows jealous of Nirmala's friendly relationship with Mansaram, and his suspicion sets off events that slowly poison the entire family. Premchand shows how each person, including Totaram's widowed sister, is trapped by customs they did not choose. Gossip and rumour do as much damage as any villain.

    First serialised in the magazine Chand in the mid-1920s and later published as a book, the novel is a powerful critique of the dowry system and marriages between young girls and older men. Alok Rai's English translation is widely read, and the story was adapted for Doordarshan television.

    Book details

    AuthorMunshi Premchand
    First published1927
    Original languageHindi
    Translated byAlok Rai
    GenreClassic
    TypeFiction
    SettingA town in north India, 1920s

    Themes

    • Dowry
    • Child marriage
    • Jealousy
    • Women's oppression
    • Social reform

    Who should read it

    Readers interested in classic Hindi fiction and early literary critiques of dowry and child marriage.

  • The Great Gatsby

    In the summer of 1922, Nick Carraway, a young Midwesterner working in the bond business, rents a small house in West Egg on Long Island. Next door stands a vast mansion where Jay Gatsby, a wealthy man no one seems to know much about, throws extravagant parties every weekend. Across the bay in fashionable East Egg live Nick's cousin Daisy and her husband Tom Buchanan, a brutish former college football star.

    Nick gradually learns that Gatsby and Daisy knew each other years before, and that the green light at the end of the Buchanans' dock holds special meaning for his neighbour. Through Nick's eyes we meet the golfer Jordan Baker, Tom's mistress Myrtle Wilson and her husband George, who runs a garage in the grim valley of ashes between the suburbs and Manhattan.

    Short and lyrical, the novel is a portrait of the excess of the Roaring Twenties and a critique of the American Dream, class and reinvention. Little noticed on publication in 1925, it is now one of the most widely taught American novels.

    Book details

    AuthorF. Scott Fitzgerald
    First published1925
    Original languageEnglish
    GenreClassic
    TypeFiction
    Pages (approx.)180
    SettingLong Island and New York City, summer 1922

    Themes

    • The American Dream
    • Wealth and class
    • Longing
    • Reinvention
    • Moral decay

    Who should read it

    Readers looking for a short, beautifully written American classic about ambition, money and longing.