This anthology broadly focuses on the question of ageing by bringing together an impressive range of stories and poems from across the Indian languages. It constructs a comprehensive collection of representational writings on ageing from contemporary India while drawing attention to the central importance of age as a category of identity that is complex, fragmented, dispersed, multiple, contested, and conflictual.
The six sections in which the stories and poems are categorized are relevant to both a sense of the content and to the experience of ageing in India. The wide range of stories included here look at ageing from the multiple, overlapping perspectives of intergenerational relations, homes, belongings, poverty, dislocation, memory, madness, nation, illness, and death. With a detailed introduction by the editor, Ira Raja, this well-thought-out, well-structured, and superbly-chosen collection represents some of the best contemporary writers from across the Indian languages. It will make an extremely valuable addition to the anthologies of contemporary Indian writing on a topic that is of particular interest to the academia at this time. It will not only appeal to the general reader with an interest in South Asia, its literature, culture, and society, but also to specialists in gerontology.