M.R. 安纳德

穆尔克·拉吉·阿南德（1905年12月12日 - 2004年9月28日）又译M.R. 安纳德，是一位印度作家，他主要写英语小说。 不过他的英语小说中有不少来自旁遮普语和印度斯坦语的习语， 他曾获得莲花装勋章。

穆尔克·拉吉·阿南德生于白沙瓦的一个印度教卡特里家庭。 阿南德曾在卡尔萨学院就读， 1924年毕业之后移居英国。他曾在伦敦大学学院学习，后来又进入剑桥大学学习，并于1929年获得哲学博士学位。

1938年，阿南德与英国女演员、共产党员凯瑟琳·范盖尔德 (Kathleen Van Gelder) 结婚，育有一女苏希拉 (Susheela)，后两人于1948年离婚。

阿南德支持社会主义。

1950年，阿南德与来自孟买的一位帕西古典舞蹈家结婚。 2004年9月28日，他因肺炎在浦那去世，享年98岁。

Mulk Raj Anand (12 December 1905 – 28 September 2004) was an Indian writer in the English language, recognised for his depiction of the lives of the poorer class in the traditional Indian society. One of the pioneers of Indo-Anglian fiction, he, together with R. K. Narayan and Raja Rao, was one of the first India-based writers in the English language to gain an International readership. Anand is admired for his novels and short stories, which have acquired the status of classics of modern Indian English literature; they are noted for their perceptive insight into the lives of the oppressed and for their analysis of impoverishment, exploitation and misfortune. He became known for his protest novel Untouchable (1935), which was followed by other works on the Indian poor such as Coolie (1936) and Two Leaves and a Bud (1937). He is also noted for being among the first writers to incorporate Punjabi and Hindustani idioms into English, and was a recipient of the civilian honour of the Padma Bhushan, the third-highest civilian award in the Republic of India.

Early life and education

Mulk Raj Anand was born in a Hindu Khatri family in Peshawar. Anand studied at Khalsa College, Amritsar, graduating with honours in 1924 before moving to England. While working in a restaurant to support himself, he attended University College London as an undergraduate and later studied at Cambridge University, earning a Ph.D. in philosophy in 1929 with a dissertation on Bertrand Russell and the English empiricists. During this time he forged friendships with members of the Bloomsbury Group. He also spent time in Geneva, lecturing at the League of Nations' International Committee on Intellectual Cooperation.

Anand married English actress and communist Kathleen Van Gelder in 1938; they had a daughter, Susheela, before divorcing in 1948.

Career

Mulk Raj Anand's literary career was launched by a family tragedy arising from the rigidity of India's caste system. His first prose essay was a response to the suicide of an aunt excommunicated by her family for sharing a meal with a Muslim woman. His first novel, Untouchable, published in 1935, is a chilling exposé of the lives of India's untouchable caste which were neglected at that time. The novel follows a single day in the life of Bakha, a toilet-cleaner, who accidentally bumps into a member of a higher caste, triggering a series of humiliations. Bakha searches for salve to the tragedy of the destiny into which he was born, talking with a Christian missionary, listening to a speech about untouchability by Mahatma Gandhi and a subsequent conversation between two educated Indians, but by the end of the book Anand suggests that it is technology, in the form of the newly introduced flush toilet, that may be his savior by eliminating the need for a caste of toilet cleaners.

Untouchable, which captures the vernacular inventiveness of the Punjabi and Hindi idiom in English, was widely acclaimed, and won Anand his reputation as India's Charles Dickens. The novel's introduction was written by his friend E. M. Forster, whom he met while working on T. S. Eliot's magazine Criterion. Forster writes: "Avoiding rhetoric and circumlocution, it has gone straight to the heart of its subject and purified it."