3 Review(s)

Premchand's literary career started as a freelancer in Urdu. In his initial short stories he has depicted the patriotic upsurge that was sweeping the country in the first decade of the 19th century. In 1914, Premchand started writing in Hindi. He was the first Hindi author to introduce realism in his writings. He pioneered the new art form of fiction with a social purpose. He wrote about the life around him and made his readers aware of the problems of the urban middle-class and the country's villages. Besides being a great novelist, Premchand was also a social reformer and thinker. His works form an important part of the domain of Hindi literature. In this set of books are included his two popular novels – Nirmala, the story of a young girl who faces the trauma and horrors of being a woman in a patriarchal society and Pratigya, that shows the situation of the widows in the country and holds a positive view for their remarriage. Both the novels depict the misfortunes of women in a nation that is said to celebrate their divinity.