Mahesh Dattani is a well-known Indian director, actor and the first playwright in English to be awarded the Sahitya Akademi award. His highly acclaimed plays include Final Solutions, Dance Like a Man, Bravely Fought the Queen, On a Muggy Night in Mumbai, Tara, Thirty Days in September, and The Murder that Never Was.
Dattani’s plays are strongly Indian in flavour and tone which attract the audiences because of their strong emotional appeal. He has presented a large variety of social phenomena we come across in everyday life. He has been quite audacious in staging themes that are considered taboo in our society. However, there is no obscenity or vulgarity in his expression in dealing with sex-related issues. His treatment of the subject is subtle and the dialogues of his characters are catchy.
The book is an anthology of scholarly articles on various aspects of Mahesh Dattani’s plays. A representation of subjugation depicted through the conflict of traditional cultural thought in Dattani’s plays has been highlighted. Revisiting him, an attempt has also been made to analyze whether economic progress has changed the psychology of womenfolk and the mentality of mankind—a theme on which some of Dattani’s plays are based. Some other themes used by Dattani and taken up in the book include emotional, social and moral issues of contemporary society; communal hatred in the fundamentalist society; and crises of urban existence afflicting the upper middle classes.
Dattani chooses expressionism to illustrate the continuous struggle of modern Indian society in familial, social, moral and cultural spheres. This has been ably explored in the anthology. It will be useful for the students and teachers of Indian English Literature and researchers in this field.
Vijay Kumar Sharma, a distinguished researcher and teacher, has been teaching English in Delhi University for more than four decades and is Principal of Ram Lal Anand College (University of Delhi). He has been a British Council Visitor to Oxford and Strathclyde Universities (UK) to study cultures of England and Scotland; a Fulbright Scholar at Boston (Massachusetts) and Philadelphia (Pennsylvania); a Post-Doctoral Indo-Shastri Canadian Research Fellow at Carlton University (Ottawa) and the University of Toronto (Toronto); and a Salzburg Seminar Fellow at Salzburg (Austria).
The recipient of several academic grants and awards, V.K. Sharma has co-edited an international journal in Canadian Studies and four books on various scholarly subjects. He has been trained at the CIEFL, Hyderabad in ELT and has been a teacher trainer for more than 25 years. As a resource person in ELT, especially in curriculum design and evaluation, he has also served as the Chairperson of Forum for Teachers of English Language and Literature, and is the Patron of ELTAI, Kanpur Chapter. His academic interests include Indian, American, English, Canadian, and South Asian, North American Literatures, and Gender Studies, Translation and Translation Studies.
Shyam Samtani taught English Literature for more than four decades. A Visiting Professor in School of Languages, Devi Ahilya University, Indore for more than two decades, Samtani had also been a Resource Person at the Refresher Courses in Indore, Jabalpur and Rewa. He presented papers and chaired various sessions in national and international seminars. He has published more than 35 papers in research journals and books. Having published and travelled widely, Samtani retired as Head and Professor, PG Department of English and Research Centre, Indore Christian College, Indore.
