Book review
Mahesh Dattani is the first Indian playwright writing in English to be awarded the Sahitya Akademi award. His plays bring Indian drama into the present day in their themes—sexuality, religious tension and gender issues—while still focussing on human relationships and personal and moral choices which are the classic concerns of world drama.

Final Solutions, Dance Like a Man and On a Muggy Night in Mumbai have been staged to critical and public acclaim all over the country and abroad, and his radio plays, Seven Steps Around the Fire and Do the Needful, have been aired on BBC radio. The plays in this collection are prefaced by introductions, which provide fascinating insights into the plays-in-performance in the context of Indian and world theatre.

These eight plays, widely varied in thematic and stylistic content, are a tribute to the dramatic vision and skill of a man who has transformed the face of urban theatre in India.

‘[Dattani’s work] probes tangled attitudes in contemporary India towards communal differences, consumerism and gender… a brilliant contribution to Indian drama in English.’
—Sahitya Akademi award citation

’At last we have a playwright who gives sixty million English-speaking Indians an identity. Thank you, Mahesh Dattani!’
—Alyque Padamsee

Paperback
Demy | 528 pages |
Published : 1/1/2000