A collection of finely crafted stories that challenge our political, social and cultural beliefs. One of the leading exponents of the Modernist school in Kannada and Jnanpith award winner, U.R. Anantha Murthy has been a writer for nearly five decades. This excellent anthology brings together stories from his five collections. Spanning thirty-five years from 1955-89, they represent his journey from ‘an angry young radical to an intensely humanist conservative’. 'Clip Joint’ explores the conflict and confluence of Indian and Western values through an encounter between an Indian student in England and his English classmate. ‘Ghatashradhha’ is a severe indictment of the brahminical system where a priest performs a mock funeral for his child-widow daughter, Yamunakka, who has become pregnant. The critique of unquestioning belief in tradition is pursued in ‘Akkayya’ but resolved with a touch of humor through the protagonist’s singular life story. In the crowning story, ‘Stallion of the Sun’, which is typical of Anantha Murthy’s later, self-reflexive phase, the dissonance between tradition and modernity settles in favour of simple faith. The seven masterful stories in this collection, many of which have been translated into English for the first time, affirm Anantha Murthy as one of India’s foremost fiction writers.