Contents: Preface. 1. A brief story of Indian short story in English/B.P. Sinha. 2. Rabindra Nath Tagore's The Postmaster: a fine fusion of philosophy and poetry/Amar Nath Prasad. 3. Humanism in the short stories of Tagore/Nilesh Tare. 4. The short stories of Mulk Raj Anand and R.K. Narayan and their social perspective/K. Sandhya. 5. Comic irony in R.K. Narayan stories/B.P. Jyothi. 6. Comic elements in the select short stories of R.K. Narayan/T.S. Ramesh. 7. R.K. Narayan's short stories: a miniature world of India/B.S. Nimavat. 8. The short stories of Raja Rao: a study in technique/Anju Bala Agrawal. 9. On the Ganga ghat: a beautiful blending of religious impulse and metaphysical way of living/Meenakshi Choubey. 10. The hammer of God : an note on Raja Rao's 'Javni'/S.G. Vaidya. 11. Nayantara's exploration of the true spirit of womanhood in Martand/Harbir Singh Randhawa. 12. Silent submission: the roles women perform in life in Shashi Deshpande's Collected Stories volume 2/Himadri Roy. 13. Human relations: beyond human grasp in the short stories of Shashi Deshpande/Pallavi Mishra. 14. Crossing over between two worlds: Mahasweta Devi's short stories and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak's translation praxis/Shibu Simon and Correya Blazy. 15. Shiv K. Kumar's 'To nun with love'/Shweta Sharma. 16. A comparative analysis of George Orwell's Shooting an Elephant and Ruskin Bond's A Job Well Done/Norah Nivedita Shaw. 17. The supernatural characters and the human nature in Ruskin Bond's short stories/Suresh Dhoke. 18. Emotive cadences in Vishnu Prabhakar's Beyond the Flesh/D. Padmarani. 19. Arun Joshi's story The Boy with the Flute/Santosh Chakrabarti. 20. Man as a victim of alienation and loss of identity: a critical assessment of Chaman Nahal's "The womb"/S. John Peter Joseph. 21. Exploring the complexities of the diasporic life: a study of Jhumpa Lahiri's interpreter of maladies and the namesake/Pradip Kumar Patra. 22. Jhumpa Lahiri as interpreter of Indian Americans in interpreter of maladies/Jaya Srivastava. 23. Nisha Da Cunha's select short stories: a psycho, socio and cultural perspective/K. Sandhya. 24. Woman As Servitium: with reference to Gangadhar Gadgil's select short stories/T.S. Ramesh. 25. Feminist motif in Kalki's short story The Rebirth of Sri Kanthan and Sarah Joseph's The Scooter/Harbir Singh Randhawa. Index.

"Indian Short Stories in English : Critical Explorations is an anthology of more than twenty critical research papers on the various authors of Indian English short stories. It critically explores the short stories of R.N. Tagore, Mulk Raj Anand, R.K. Narayan, Raja Rao, Nayantara Sahgal, Shashi Deshpande, Mahasweta Devi, Shiv K. Kumar, Ruskin Bond, Vishnu Prabhakar, Arun Joshi, Chaman Nahal, Jhumpa Lahiri, Nisha Da Cunha, Gangadhar Gadgil Kalki and Sarah Joseph. The leading article is about the brief story of Indian short story in English. All the papers included in this volume are very critical, objective and exhaustive which, we hope, will certainly slake the thirst of a number of students and teachers who want to be more conversant with the various aspects of Indian English short stories." (jacket)