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Mridula Garg's novel sensitively portrays the predicament of two generations during and immediately after the independence movement. Anitya moves beyond the theme of independence, the trauma of partition, and victimhood.

Focusing on everyday personal battles between principles and self-interest, it shows how idealism turns quite easily into betrayal in the face of personal gratification. Anitya is about the pain of ordinary Indians who failed to keep their tryst with destiny as they travelled from the crossroads to an unforeseen end.

Using flashbacks, the novel depicts the struggle of its characters as they try to adjust to the counterfeit democracy they find themselves in. The imagined conversations between the two central characters, Avijit and Anitya, reveal how, under the veil of respectable fronts, secrets and emotional failures corrode nearly everything.

With an insightful introduction by Sunita Jain and Krishna Dutt Paliwal, this volume will appeal to students and teachers of Indian writing in translation, translation studies, and comparative literature as well as anybody interested in contemporary Indian literature.