Daniell Comes to Judgement: New and Vintage Daruwalla

Daniell Comes to Judgement: New and Vintage Daruwallais 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 less than two months, and perennial favourites (of vintage worth) are still relevant in today’s changed times. The collection showcases the author’s enduring range. The new stories are first-person narratives, and, except one, they are voices of women—city women—who put 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 that transport readers to a pre-language, pre-script era, where fantasy and myth blend with reality; to amphibious trains and an island of birds. In short, the master storyteller weaves his magic yet again.