THE GIFT and Other Stories

Description

Well before the publication of her first short story collection Tohfa, Surinder Geet was already recognized in Punjabi literary circles as a sincere, sensitive fiction writer committed to humanistic values and social concers. Her stories, located in India and Canada, perspectively and realistically portray complex social and cultural situations in the Eastern and Western societies where orthodox racial, cultural, religious and casteist prejudices often destroy the lives of innocent, hapless victims trapped in situations beyond their control. Geet has a good command over the craft of the short story and it gives a distinctive flavour and unique identity to her fictional narratives. Psychological insights and deep understanding of emotional/social conduct of various characters provides the undrpinnings to her stories. The spirit of the human predicament is captured through portraying the dishonesty, cheating and manipulatives conduct in contemporary society to expose and overcome those social evils. In this sense her stories become a humanistic testament of the socio-cultural history of the times. Thus, the first-person narrator does not simply represents the universal and democraticv human spirit. The narrative content of these simple tales will hopefully be translated into many other languages and be available to readers over the world.