Kevein Books and Reviews

Seva Sadan was the first novel of Munshi Premchand, it was first written in Urdu as Baazare-e-Husn (the market of beauty). But, its Hindi version got published first. The story starts with a very common social scene: an honest police officer finds himself unable to marry off his elder daughter, Suman, to a good family because of hefty dowry demands and his financial limitations. So, he tries corruptive ways to obtain enough money so as to play his responsibilities towards his two daughters, instead he lands up behind the bars. After a series of misfortunes, his elder daughter – Suman - finally gets married to a poor man (that’s done by his uncle). Suman is not accustomed to live in abject poverty; and also her husband is not a nice man as he doubts on her character. Amid shaky understanding, the marriage looks a bleak bond between them. And then one day he throws her out of the home. For some days, she manages to survive on roads and here and there, in Vanaras. Seeing her lo...

Jay Harper, a young geophysicist, comes to Harper’s Park to explore the village of his ancestors. Nestled in a valley below the snowy peaks of New Mexico’s Sangre de Christo Mountains, the village is submerged beneath an artificial lake. It has not rained for months and the lake behind the big dam is low. As Jay, in scuba gear, swims through the placid waters looking in the old cemetery for family tombstones, he notices disturbing features in the construction of the dam. Would it hold, he wonders, if mountain torrent set loose a flash flood? Jay warns of the danger to the town, but the powerful and rich do not care to listen to anything that might threaten their prosperity, and the poor Spanish-Americans in the shanty town below the dam are hardly considered. Then, high up in the mountains, it starts to rain, and rain… Only when it becomes alarmingly clear that the dam may not stand up to this unexpected danger, do the inhabitants of Harper’s Park forget their differences i...