Known as the most important voice for the women in Punjabi literature, Amrita Pritam is equally read and respected both in India & Pakistan. in 1956, she became the first woman to win the Sahitya Academi Award for her magnum opus , a long poem, Sunehray (Messages),later she received the Bhartiya Jnanpith , one of India's highest literary awards, in 1982 for Kagaz Te Canvas (The Paper Canvas). The Padma Sri came her way in 1969 and finally, Padma Vibhushan, India's second highest civilian award, in 2004, and in the same year she was honoured with India's highest literary award, given by the Sahitya Academy (India's Academy of Letters), the Sahitya Academy felloship given to the "immortals of literature" for lifetime achievement.
Anton Pavlovich Chekhov was a short story writer and playwright. He was born in Tagang, southern Russia, on 29 January 1860, and died of tuberculosis at the health spa of Badenweiler, Germany, on 15 July 1904. His brief playwriting career produced four classics and many short stories. His short stories are held in high esteem by writers and critics. Chekhov practiced as a doctor throughout most of his literary career: "Medicine is my lawful wife," he once said, "and literature is my mistress".
Chekhov renounced the theatre after the disastrous reception of The Seagull in 1896; but the play was revived to acclaim by Konstantin Stanislavsky's Moscow Art Theatre. Leo Tolstoy reportedly told Chekhov, "You know, I cannot abide Shakespeare, but your plays are even worse". Tolstoy did, however, admire Chekhov's short stories. Chekhov had at first written stories only for the money, but as his artistic ambition grew, he made formal innovations which have influenced the evolution of the modern short story.His originality consists in an early use of the stream-of-consciousness technique, later exploited by Virginia Woolf and other modernists, combined with a disavowal of the moral finality of traditional story structure. He made no apologies for the difficulties this posed to readers, insisting that the role of an artist was to ask questions, not to answer them.
Francis Bret Harte was an American author and poet, best remembered for his accounts of pioneering life in California.
Writing in his autobiography four years after Harte's death, Mark Twain famously insults Harte, characterizing him and his writing as insincere. He criticizes the miners' dialect, claiming it never existed outside of the story ("The Luck of Roaring Camp"). Twain reserves his most damning statements for Harte's personal life, especially after Harte left the West, including his habitual borrowing of money from his friends with no intent to repay, his haughty attitude and his financial abandonment of his wife and children.
Bret Harte's witty, sometimes heart-rending tales of frontier California earned him acclaim during the 1860s as the "new prophet of American letters”
Born in Boston , Massachusetts U.S. Died in Maryland U.S. Married to Virginia Eliza Clemm Poe ,Edgar Allen Poe was an American poet, short-story writer, editor and literary critic, and is considered part of the American Romantic Movement. Best known for his tales of mystery and the macabre, Poe was one of the earliest American practitioners of the short story and is considered the inventor of the detective-fiction genre.
George Orwell, was an English Author whose work is marked by a profound consciousness of social injustice, an intense dislike of totaliarinism, and a passion for clarity in language.Considered "perhaps the 20th century’s best chronicler of English culture". He wrote works in many different genres including fiction, polemics, journalism, memoir and critical essays. His most famous works are his two novels, Animal Farm (1945) and Ninteen Eighty Four ( 1949).
Henry Graham Greene was an English, author, playwright and literary critic. His works explore the ambivalent moral and political issues of the modern world. Greene was notable for his ability to combine serious literary acclaim with widespread popularity.
Henri René Albert Guy de Maupassant was a popular 19th-century Frenc writer. He is one of the fathers of the modern short story. A protege of Flaubert, Maupassant's short stories are characterized by their economy of style and their efficient effortless dénouement. He also wrote six short novels. A number of his stories often denote the futility of war and the innocent civilians who get crushed in it - many are set during the Franco-Prussian War of the 1870s.
Born in Odense, Danish author and poet, most famous for his fairy tales. Among his best-known stories are "The Snow Queen", "The Little Mermaid", "The Emperors New Clothes" and "The Ugly Duckling".
During Andersen's lifetime he was feted by royalty and acclaimed for having brought joy to children across Europe. His fairy tales have been translated into over 150 languages and continue to be published in "millions of copies all over the world". Andersen actively supported the Horizon Christian Academy, which bears his initials. He died aged 70 in Copenhagen.
(2-4-1805 to 4-8-1805)
Kids Corner
Story-
The Emperor's New Clothes ( Lekhni-June-2008- Year-2-Issue-4)
An American author and humorist, known for his wit and humour, Twain enjoyed immense public popularity. His keen wit and incisive satire earned him praise from both critics and peers. Most noted for his novels Adventures of Huckleberry Finn; which has since been called the Great American novel and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. Twain became a friend to presidents, artists, industrialists and European royalty.
Discource- Decay in Art Of Lying. (Lekhni-March-2009)
Roald Dahl was a British novelist, short story writer and screenwriter, born in Wales of Norwegian parents, who rose to prominence in the 1940s with works for both childen and adults, and became one of the world's bestselling authors.
His most popular books include The Twits, Charlie and the choclate Factory, James and the Giant Peach, Matilda, The Witches And The BFG .
Story
Lamb To The Slaughter-Lekhni-November-2008
Down the memory lane
A Grand Time ( Childhood memoire) -Lekhni-November-2008
"Now this is the Law of the Jungle -- as old and as true as the sky;And the Wolf that shall keep it may prosper, but the Wolf that shall break it must die.As the creeper that girdles the tree-trunk the Law runneth forward and back --For the strength of the Pack is the Wolf, and the strength of the Wolf is the Pack." From The Law of the Jungle
Kipling was one of the most popular writers in English, in both prose and verse, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The author Henry James said of him: "Kipling strikes me personally as the most complete man of genius (as distinct from fine intelligence) that I have ever known." In 1907, he was awarded the Noble Prize in literature, making him the first english language writer to receive the prize, and to date he remains its youngest recipient. Among other honours, he was sounded out for the British Poet Laureatship and on several occasions for a knighthood all of which he declined.
Hector Hugo Munro (Saki) was born in Burma, where his father was a senior official in the Burma police. The cruelity of some of his stories has beenn attributed to his strict upbringing from the age of two by maiden aunts in Devonshire. He was educated in Exmouth and at Bedford Grammer School. Later he travelled widely in Europe with his father. He joined in Buma police , but resigned because of ill health, and became a journalist and then a short story writter. He published several collection of short stories, including The Chronicles of Clovis (1911) and Beasts and Super-Beasts(1914) He also wrote two novels, The Unbearable Bessington(1912) and When William Came(1913). He enlisted as a private in 1914, refused a commission, went to France and was killed as a sergeant, in 1916. His last words, heard by a fellow soldier in the trenches, were 'Put that bloody cigarette out'-followed by the sound of a rifle shot. His brilliant short stories are marked by their economy and the blackness of their comedy.His witty and sometimes macabre stories satirized Edwardian society and culture.
Saki is considered a master of the short story and is often compared to O. Henry and Dorothy Parker. His tales feature delicately drawn characters and finely judged narratives. "The Open Window" may be his most famous, with a closing line ("Romance at short notice was her speciality") that has entered the lexicon.
In addition to his short stories (which were first published in newspapers, as was the custom of the time, and then collected into several volumes) he also wrote several plays; a historical study, The Rise of the Russian Empire; a short novel, The Unbearable Bassington; and two novella-length satires, the episodic The Westminster Alice (a Parliamentary parody of Alice in Wonderland), and When William Came, subtitled A Story of London Under the Hohenzollern.
The name Saki is often thought to be a reference to the cupbearer in the Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyam, a poem mentioned disparagingly by the eponymous character in "Reginald on Christmas Presents" and alluded to in a few other stories. It may, however, be a reference to the South American primate of the same name, "a small, long-tailed monkey from the Western Hemisphere" that is a central character in "The Remoulding of Groby Lington" and that, like Munro himself, hid a vicious streak beneath a gentle exterior.
Born in Badaayun Uttar pradeh, India, Ismat chughtai was an eminent Indian Urdu writer, known for her indomitable spirit and a fierce feministic views. Her outspoken and controversial style of writing made her the passionate voice for the unheard, and she has become an inspiration for the younger generation of writers, readers and intellectuals. She was considered the grand dame of Urdu fiction, as one of the four pillars of modern Urdu short story, the other three being Sadat Hasan Manto, Krishna Chander and Rajinder Singh Bedi
15 August. 1915 – 24 October, 1991) Born in Badaayun Uttar-pradesh, Ismat Chughtai was an eminent Indian Urdu writer, known for her indomitable spirit and a fierce feministic views.
James Joyes a well respected and liked name in 20'th century literature, was an an Irish novelist was noted for his experimental use of language in such works as Ulysses (1922) and Finnegans Wake (1939). Joyce's technical innovations in the art of the novel include an extensive use of interior monologue; he used a complex network of symbolic parallels drawn from the mythology, history, and literature, and created a unique language of invented words, puns, and allusions.
1s't Prime Minister of India in office (15 august 1947 to till death 27'th may 1964) Affectionately known as Pandit ji by all & Nehru Chacha by the first new generation of independent India (His birthday is still celebrated as ' Bal -diwas' all over the nation) was a towering figure in shaping the future of India. Born into a rich barrister family of Allahabad, He was a poet & thinker at heart. He penned many books & his famous speech 'tryst with destiny' is still considered a masterpiece of oration. This historic speech made by Jawaharlal Nehru, is considered in modern India to be a landmark oration that captures the essence of the triumphant culmination of the hundred-years of India's freedom struggle against the British Empire.
famous books by Jawaharlal Nehru
The Discovery Of India
Glimpses of World history.
Letters from a Father to his Daughter.
Down in the Memory lane-Tryst with Destiny (Lekhni-August 2008)
Known by millions of Indians as ' Bapu ' (Father), Mahatma should be called the strength of India. Strong believer in Truth and non-violence; his auto-biography is a torch-bearer to many.
O. Henry is the pen name of American writer William Sydney Porter . Porter's 400 short stories are known for their wit, wordplay, characterization and the clever use of twist endings.
He was called the American answer to Guy de Maupassant. Both authors wrote twist endings, but O. Henry stories were much more playful and optimistic.
Most of O. Henry's stories are set in his own time, the early years of the 20th century. Many take place in New York City, and deal for the most part with ordinary people: clerks, policemen, waitresses. His stories are also well known for witty narration.
Fundamentally a product of his time, O. Henry's work provides one of the best English examples of catching the entire flavor of an age. Whether roaming the cattle-lands of Texas, exploring the art of the "gentle grafter," or investigating the tensions of class and wealth in turn-of-the-century New York, O. Henry had an inimitable hand for isolating some element of society and describing it with an incredible economy and grace of language. Some of his best and least-known work resides in the collection Cabbages and Kings, a series of stories which each explore some individual aspect of life in a paralytically sleepy Central American town while each advancing some aspect of the larger plot and relating back one to another in a complex structure which slowly explicates its own background even as it painstakingly erects a town which is one of the most detailed literary creations of the period
Rabindra Nath Tagore, born and died in Calcutta. is a towering figure in literature. A cultural icon of Bengal and India, he became Asia's first Nobel laureate when he won the 1913 Nobel Prize in Literature. He established Viswa-Bharti or Shanti-Niketan... a gift to the world of his undying love and dedication to Art and literature. Tagore was a master of short story genre. He still continues to hold sway over reader's heart even after so many years of his death. His writtings have a strong narrative thread and delight young and old alike. Tagore had a remarkable capacity to empathise with people in different situations. His writtings reflect a great deal of psychological and creative insight.
Now this is the Law of the Jungle -- as old and as true as the sky; And the Wolf that shall keep it may prosper, but the Wolf that shall break it must die. As the creeper that girdles the tree-trunk the Law runneth forward and back -- For the strength of the Pack is the Wolf, and the strength of the Wolf is the Pack.
Born as Narendra Nath Dutta in Kalcutta, India, Vivekananda is known as the spiritual leader of modern India's reform. He achieved a lot in his short life. Died aged 39, at Belur Math near Kalcutta.
He was the first Indian to go to the west and talk about Hinduism and its key beliefs.
Born at Chitti near Jalandhar, he went to the local school and college for his early education. In 1961, he decided to leave for England though he could never ever feel settled there, and so kept returning to India, quite frequently. To an extent , his story The Devided Shores is based upon his personal experience of non-belonging. He has published three collections of stories:
Agath ( without Wings) 1961
Ret, Sagar Te Raat Da Husan ( Sand, Sea and the Splendour of Night) 1970
Manto Mar Gaya ( So Manto Died) 1982
Two plays,
Chakravyuh ( The vicious Circle)
Lamhi Sarak Lahore Di ( The Long Road Of Lahore)
and a novelette called
Galorian ( The Gossip Mongers)
Along with Raghubir Dhandh, Tarsem Neelgiri, too could easily be counted among those in the vanguard of the first-generation progressive Punjabi writers. His unique style of story telling, coupled with his flexible use of language and idiom, often sets him apart from his other contemporaries.
Born around third century. Creator of Panhtantra ; these stories written as far back as 2000 years came to be known as Panchatantra. The influence of Vishnu Sharma’s stories has been vast. By the 3rd and 4th centuries Panchatantra had already been translated into Syriac and Arabic from the original version in Sanskrit written in the 1st and 2nd century A.D. Subsequently there were versions in Paisachi, Pahlavi and Prakrit (other Indian languages). Panchatantra has been translated into 50 different languages with 200 different versions. What is more interesting is that even Grimms fairy tales and Aesops fables can be traced back to this treasure-house of animal tales created by Vishnu Sharma.
Story- king and the foolish monkey-(Lekhni-August-2008)
Roald Dahl was a British novelist, short story writer and screenwriter,
