Contents: Foreword. Preface. Introduction. 1. Background. 2. Modern Hindi literature. 3. Ansu as literature. 4. Poetic method. 5. Poetic meaning. 6. Viraha in Prasad's Ansu. 7. Ansu-text with translation. Glossary. Bibliography. Verse-index.

"In the Garden of Loneliness" presents the reader with a translation into English of one of the masterpieces of modern Hindi Literature. This masterpiece is Jayshankar Prasad's ANSU. The imagery throughout this long poem (190 stanzas) is of a desperate love, felt by the poet, for a sweetheart who has somehow left him or deserted him. The setting is in a beautiful garden, made desolate by the absence of the beloved. As the introduction indicates, the desperation of separation (Viraha) can be mythologized into a universal longing of the soul for God or of the modern person's quest for contact with the spirit beyond the existential loneliness of the materialism of the contemporary world-view." (jacket)