ABSTRACT
Vilas Sarang is a Marathi writer who can be termed a surrealist and the closest to an ‘avant-garde’ sensibility among the writers examined. He wrote stories that are difficult to interpret, and although he cited western writers as inspiration, his stories deal with a recognisable milieu although in a surreal way. The common factor uniting his stories is a lonely protagonist with low self-esteem reminiscent of Franz Kafka’s stories. Where he differs is in his inability to place his stories in a community, even within a family (in contrast to Kafka). His writing was not appreciated by his peers and the critical literature devoted to his work is virtually non-existent – despite the praise he received from Samuel Beckett. The purpose of literature is often in the nature of received wisdom to writers of the social-realist school and an avant-garde must break with that. Writers like Kafka wrote with the expectation that there would be a readership eventually for their work but Sarang’s stories and the absence of a reception to them make us ask if an avant-garde is possible in Indian literature and if its unlikeliness does not isolate Indian literature in the world.
