Daniell Comes to Judgement: New and Vintage Daruwalla

Daniell Comes to Judgment: New and Vintage Daruwalla is a collection of short stories by Keki N. Daruwalla, the acclaimed poet-cum-novelist of our time. There are new stories here written especially for this book in a span of less than two months and perennial favourites (of vintage worth) still relevant in today’s changed times. The collection showcases the author’s enduring range.The new stories are first person narratives and, with the exception of one, voices of women—city women—putting into words their moods and memories. The author has deliberately shunned the violence-factor in this collection. In fact ‘Bars’, a story included in this volume, is a commentary on the forces of intolerance straining the social fabric. Coming to the perennial favourites, they are Vintage Keki Daruwalla; vignettes from the vast repository of a wordsmith who can straddle myth and reality with ease and finesse, breathe life into metaphors, coalesce fact and fancy and still sound fascinatingly credible, with his patent black humour well in place. The collection includes stories where fantasy and myth transport one to the pre-language, pre-script era; to amphibious trains and an island of birds. In short, the master storyteller weaves his magic yet again.