Hats and Doctors (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9780143417187)

Upendranath Ashk 19101996, was one of Hindi literatures best-known and most controversial authors. Ashk was born in Jalandhar and spent the early part of his writing career as an Urdu author in Lahore. Encouraged by Premchand, he switched to Hindi, and a few years before Partition, moved to Bombay, Delhi and finally Allahabad in 1948, where he spent the rest of his life. By the time of his death, Ashks phenomenally large oeuvre spanned over a hundred volumes of fiction, poetry, memoir, criticism and translation. Ashk is perhaps best known for his six-volume novel cycle, Girti Divarein, or Falling Wallsan intensely detailed chronicle of the travails of a young Punjabi man attempting to become a writerwhich has earned the author comparisons to Marcel Proust. Ashk was the recipient of numerous prizes and awards during his lifetime for his masterful portrayal, by turns humorous and remarkably profound, of the everyday lives of ordinary people.
Daisy Rockwell holds a PhD in Hindi literature and has taught HindiUrdu and South Asian literature at a number of US universities. Apart from her essays on literature and art, she has written Upendranath Ashk: A Critical Biography and The Little Book of Terror, a new book of paintings and essays on the global war on terror. She is currently working on a translation of Ashks 1947 novel Girti Divarein.