Tab Article

Ratings: ★★★★★ (4.8 / 5)
Genre: Literary Fiction, Indian Literature, Social Commentary, Classics

Book Review:
Mulk Raj Anand's Untouchable is more than a novel—it is a cry of rage, a plea for justice, and a landmark in Indian literature. First published in the 1930s, this extraordinary work remains as powerful and relevant today as it was nearly a century ago.

The novel follows a single day in the life of Bakha, a young man who is a ''sweeper'' and latrine cleaner—an untouchable in India's brutal caste system. Bakha is strong, proud, and attractive, but in the eyes of society, he is less than human. He is forbidden to touch higher-caste people, to draw water from the public well, to enter temples. Every moment of his existence is shaped by the dehumanizing rules of a system as cruel and debilitating as apartheid.

Anand's genius lies in his ability to make us feel what it is like to be Bakha. We walk with him through the streets, experience his humiliations, share his hopes, and feel his despair. The novel is written with precision, urgency, and barely disguised fury—but also with a deep humanity that makes Bakha not a symbol but a living, breathing person.

The great E.M. Forster, who wrote the preface, said: ''It recalled to me very vividly the occasions I have walked 'the wrong way' in an Indian city, and it is a way down which no novelist has yet taken me.'' Forster recognized that Anand had done something unprecedented: he had given voice to the voiceless and made the invisible visible.

This Penguin Twentieth-Century Classics edition preserves Anand's masterpiece for a new generation. It is a novel that will open your eyes, break your heart, and leave you changed.

Untouchable is essential reading for anyone interested in Indian literature, social justice, or the enduring power of fiction to bear witness to truth. It is, quite simply, a masterpiece.