una vita tra Londra e l’India

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Mulk Raj Anand (1905-2004)  studied in India before moving to England where he graduated (si laureò) at CambridgeUniversity, in 1929. During this time he frequented  the members of the Bloomsbury Group.

His writing career stared after a family tragedy: his first main novel, Untouchable(1935) was inspired by an aunt  who committed suicide because his family excommunicated her for sharing (aver condiviso) a meal with a Muslim. With this book Anand won the reputation of being India‘s Charles Dickens. The introduction was written by his friend, E. M. Forster, whom he met while working on T. S. Eliot’s magazine Criterion. In it Forster writes: “Avoiding (evitando) rhetoric and circumlocution, it has gone straight to the heart (è andato dritto al cuore) of its subject and purified it”

Anand spent half his time in London and half in India, and was drawn  (fu attirato)to the Indian independence movement. In London, he wrote propaganda on behalf (per conto) of the Indian cause while writing as a  novelist and journalist. He was a supporter (sostenitore) of freedom everywhere people fought for it: in Spain he volunteered in the Spanish Civil War and  during World War II he worked as a script-writer for the BBC in London.  He   became a friend of George Orwell who suggested the title for Anand’second book  The Sword and the Sickleand remarked that “although (sebbene) Mr. Anand’s novel would still be interesting on its own merits (per prorpio merito) if it had been written by an Englishman, it is impossible to read it without remembering every few pages that is also a cultural curiosity,” adding that the growth (crescita)  “of an English-language Indian literature is a strange phenomeno”
He met Picasso and had some of his paintings in his collection. In England he also wrote The Village (1939), Across the Black Waters (1939),

Back to Indiain 1946, Anand continued writing poetry and essays on a wide range of subjects, as well as autobiographies and novels like Coolie (1936), and The Private Life of an Indian Prince (1953). He also founded a literary magazine, Marg, and taught in various universities without forgetting his humanitarian fight for freedom. 

He died in Pune on 28 September 2004 at the age of 98.

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