: विलास सारंग) (born 1942) is one of the most significant modernist India

India

India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...

n writer

Writer

A writer is a person who produces literature, such as novels, short stories, plays, screenplays, poetry, or other literary art. Skilled writers are able to use language to portray ideas and images....

, critic

Critic

A critic is anyone who expresses a value judgement. Informally, criticism is a common aspect of all human expression and need not necessarily imply skilled or accurate expressions of judgement. Critical judgements, good or bad, may be positive , negative , or balanced...

 and translator to emerge in the post-independence period.

Vilas Sarang was born in 1942 in Karwar

Karwar

Karwar is the administrative headquarters of Uttara Kannada district in Karnataka, India. It is a seaside town situated on the banks of the Kali river which is on the west coast of the Indian peninsula. The town lies about 15 kilometres south of the Karnataka–Goa border and 519 km north-west...

, a tiny coastal town to the south of Maharashtra on the West coast of India. His father, of the non-Brahmin Bhandari

Bhandari

For other uses, see Bhandari .Bhandari caste is among the sea-faring warrior castes of ancient and medieval India. They migrated southward from Rajputana in early 1100 and subsequently spread over different parts of India...

 caste, hailed from Malwan and was a magistrate. His mother came from Ratnagiri

Ratnagiri

Ratnāgiri is a port city on the Arabian Sea coast in Ratnagiri district in the southwestern part of Maharashtra, India. The district is a part of Konkan.The Sahyadri mountains border Ratnagiri to the east...

 and reared six sons of whom Vilas Sarang is the youngest.

He studied in Marathi, the regional language, until high school, then attended Elphinstone College

Elphinstone College

Elphinstone College is an institution of higher education affiliated to the University of Mumbai. Established in 1856, it is one of the oldest colleges of the University of Mumbai. It was exalted as a prestigious seat of learning during the British Raj and is generally observed for its vibrant alumni...

, Bombay, and obtained a doctorate in English Literature from Bombay University. From 1971 to 1974, Sarang studied in Bloomington, Indiana, from where he obtained a second doctorate in Comparative Literature under the direction of Professor Breon Mitchell.

He spent five years in Iraq

Iraq

Iraq ; officially the Republic of Iraq is a country in Western Asia spanning most of the northwestern end of the Zagros mountain range, the eastern part of the Syrian Desert and the northern part of the Arabian Desert....

 (1974 to 1979) where he taught English at the University of Basrah

University of Basrah

The University of Basrah is situated in the city of Basra, Iraq. For historic reasons the final -h is retained on Basrah in the name of the university....

. Sarang was head of the English Department at the Bombay University from 1988 to 1991, during which years he also edited The Bombay Literary Review. From 1991 to 2002, he taught at Kuwait University

Kuwait University

Kuwait University was established in October 1966, five years after Kuwait's independence from British Colonization. KU started with only two faculties, namely the Faculty of Science, Arts and Education; and a Women's College. The university had 418 students enrolled and 31 faculty members. By ,...

.

Having returned to India in 1979, he married Reba Dasgupta, of Bengali origin, in 1982, with whom he has two children. In June 2002, Sarang returned to Mumbai where he edits a literary journal called The Post Post Review.

Sarang’s stories have appeared in the UK, US, Canada and India in journals such as Encounter (magazine)

Encounter (magazine)

Encounter was a literary magazine, founded in 1953 by poet Stephen Spender and early neoconservative author Irving Kristol. The magazine ceased publication in 1991...

, The London Magazine, TriQuarterly

TriQuarterly

TriQuarterly Online is a not-for-profit American literary magazine published twice a year at Northwestern University that features fiction, nonfiction, poetry, drama, literary essays, reviews, a blog, and graphic art....

, The Malahat Review, and also in the anthologies, New Writing in India (Penguin), The Penguin Book of Horror Stories and New Directions No. 41. His published books in English include a collection of stories, Fair Tree of the Void, and two novels, In the Land of Enki and The Dinosaur Ship.

Overview of Sarang's Work

One of the most significant modernist Marathi writer, Vilas Sarang has written remarkable short stories, poems, a novel and also brilliant pieces of criticism in his first language Marathi

Marathi language

Marathi is an Indo-Aryan language spoken by the Marathi people of western and central India. It is the official language of the state of Maharashtra. There are over 68 million fluent speakers worldwide. Marathi has the fourth largest number of native speakers in India and is the fifteenth most...

 as well as in English. His Marathi short story collections are 'Soledad' (1975) and 'Atank' (1999) and translations of his stories in English are collected in 'A Fair Tree of the Void' (1990) and more recently `The Women in the Cages' (2006). A selection of his short stories also appeared in French translation in 1988. His English novel 'The Dinosaur Ship'(2005) and his Marathi novel is `Enkichya Rajyat'. His Marathi collection of poems is published under the title Kavita 1969-1984 and his collection of English poems is published as 'A Kind of Silence'(1978). He has also written significant criticism in Marathi 'Sisyphus ani Bolakka' and 'Aksharanchya Shrama Kela'(2000).He has also published The Stylistics of Literary Translation ( 1988 ) and edited the anthology Indian English Poetry Since 1950 ( 1989. He has also edited reputed literary journals like the Bombay Review and The Post Post Review .

The quest for primitive source of human existence is an important feature of his writings. His short stories are often surreal and have often been compared to Kafka. For instance, in one of his stories collected in The Women in Cages, the narrator finds himself transformed into a gigantic phallus. In another more well known story, a person named Chako is marooned on an island where women have either upper half of their bodies or the lower half. Sarang is awovedly anti-representational modernist in his aesthetics and provides a refreshing alternative to over-hyped `diaspora' and `exiled' non-resident Indian English writers like Salman Rushdie, VS Naipaul and Kiran Desai

Kiran Desai

Kiran Desai is an Indian author who is a citizen of India and a permanent resident of the United States. Her novel The Inheritance of Loss won the 2006 Man Booker Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Fiction Award...

.

Sarang sees himself as “a bilingual writer”. Indeed, as a post-colonial Indian, he has a complex relationship with language. Having published stories and articles in both Marathi and English, he acknowledges that he has a “divided psyche” - while his unconscious is “rooted in Marathi”, leaving him with a sense of greater freedom and inventiveness in Marathi, he nevertheless feels that the “definitive text ” of his creations lies invariably in their English versions, since English enables him to bring his works “before the world” (“Confessions of a Marathi Writer”, p. 309).

Various literary influences can be perceived in the writings of Sarang. The “Marathi Navakatha” (New Story) writers of the 1950s and 1960s led Sarang to use the short-story form. The modernisation of Marathi poetry by B.S.Mardhekar in the 1940s and further poetical innovation by unconventional Marathi poets like Dilip Chitre

Dilip Chitre

Dilip Purushottam Chitre was one of the foremost Indian writers and critics to emerge in the post Independence India. Apart from being a very important bilingual writer, writing in Marathi and English, he was also a painter and filmmaker.-Biography:He was born in Baroda on 17 September 1938...

 and Arun Kolatkar

Arun Kolatkar

Arun Balkrishna Kolatkar was a poet from Maharashtra, India. Writing in both Marathi and English, his poems found humor in many everyday matters. His poetry had an influence on modern Marathi poets...

 in the post-Independence era enabled Sarang to explore new avenues in his own poetical creations. Western European writers like Kafka, Camus

Camus

-People:* Albert Camus, French author, philosopher and journalist* Charles Étienne Louis Camus, French mathematician* Jean-Pierre Camus, French bishop and writer* Louis-Auguste Camus de Richemont, French military chief and baron d'Empire...

, Sartre and Beckett

Beckett

- People :* Arthur William à Beckett , English journalist and man of letters* Barry Beckett , American musician* Billy Beckett , English footballer...

 also offered Sarang “a liberating route to self-realization” as a writer, beyond the narrow, conformist paths that Marathi literature has taken since the 1980s, tending to a closed absorption in nativism and a fundamentalist Indian-versus-Western dichotomy. Sarang, on the contrary, is interested in experimenting with his own creativity by transcending the parameters of Indianness and Westernisation (“Confessions of a Marathi Writer”, p. 310-311).

His Marathi book 'सर्जनशोध आणि लिहिता लेखक' (Pursuit of Creation and Author Engaged in Writing) received an award of Government of Maharashtra in year 2008.

In English

• Tandoor Cinders (2008)
• Women In Cages (2006) (also translated in Marathi)
• The Dinosaur Ship (2005)
• A Fair Tree of the Void (1990) (also translated in Marathi)
• Editor of the anthology “Indian English Poetry Since 1950” (1989)
• The Stylistics of Literary Translation (1988)
• A Kind of Silence (1978) (a collection of poetry)
• In the Land of Enki (also translated in Marathi and Hindi
  Hindi
  Standard Hindi, or more precisely Modern Standard Hindi, also known as Manak Hindi , High Hindi, Nagari Hindi, and Literary Hindi, is a standardized and sanskritized register of the Hindustani language derived from the Khariboli dialect of Delhi...
  
  )
• Seven Critical Essays

In Marathi

• अक्षरांचा श्रम केला (2000) (literary criticism)
• आतंक (1999)
• मॅनहोलमधला माणूस
• सिसिफस आणि बोलाक्का (literary criticism)
• सोलेदादा (1975)
• रुद्र
• सर्जनशोध आणि लिहिता लेखक (received an award from the Government of Maharashtra in 2008)
• चिरंतनाचा गंध
• कविता: १९६९-१९८४ (a collection of poetry)
• Essay by Vilas Sarang (in Marathi)

External links

• Vilas Sarang Special Issue of Khel, a leading Marathi periodical
• Books Authored by Vilas Sarang
• Books that reference Vilas Sarang
• Literary Encyclopedia Article on Vilas Sarang
• Confessions of A Marathi Writer by Vilas Sarang
• The Hindu Book Review of The Women in the Cages
• Commentary on his Marathi book Sarjanshodh aani Lihita Lekhak”
• An Illustrated History of Indian Writing in English By Arvind Krishna Mehrotra