A Winters Night

A Winter`s Night and Other Stories brings together, for young readers, some of his most powerful hort stories, This is a world inhabited by people like halku, forced to spend the bitterly cold winter night in the open, without a blanket; kaki, the old invalid aunt, ill-treated by her own relatives; and Shankar, reduced to being a bonded labourer for the sake of a handful of wheat. Premchand describes their plights with unflinching homesty. Yet all is not hopeless in this world. There is also little Hamid, who buys tongs for his old grandmother rather than toys for himself; Ladli, who saves her share of puris for her blind aunt; and Big Brother, trying in vain to remember the strange names of English kings and queens.