Wikipedia
Amarkant (1 July 1925 – 17 February 2014) was an Indian writer of Hindi literature. His novel Inhin Hathiyaron Se earned him the Sahitya Akademi Award in 2007, and Vyas Samman in year 2009.
He was awarded Jnanpith Award for the year 2009. Amarkant is considered as one of the prominent writers of the story writing tradition of Premchand but certainly is credited to add something better in that tradition by his own individuality. In late 2000s, the octogenarian Amarkant was fighting against penury.
Amarkant is best known for his short stories although he also published six novels. His short stories, such as Deputy Collectory, Dopahar ka Bhojan (The Lunch), Zindagi aur Jonk (Life and the Leech) and Hatyaare (The Assassins), are considered milestones in post-Independence fiction. He started writing in a period when the Nai Kahani (New Story) movement was heralding a big thematic and structural shift, and almost overshadowed the tradition of Premchand which used to be the mainstream fiction in Hindi. This movement focussed more on urban settings, individual characteristics, man-woman relationships, and so on, in place of people in villages and small towns. The scene was dominated by authors such as Mohan Rakesh, Kamaleshwar and Rajendra Yadav, aggressive advocates of the movement as a new metaphor for and of modern society.
Amarkant was one of the few writers who stuck to the ‘social realistic' tradition of Premchand. Literary critics like Dr Vishwanath Tripathi consider his short stories to be in the lineage of Premchand's later works, particularly his masterpiece Qafan (The Shroud), which is a compactly crafted tale of a Dalit family. The portrayal of Siddheshwari Devi in Dopahar ka Bhojan, Babu Sakaldip Singh in Deputy Collectory and Rajua in Zindagi aur Jonk are intricate and remarkable. For instance, Siddheshwari Devi in Dopahar ka Bhojan distributes a very limited quantity of food amongst her retrenched husband and unemployed children so that nobody feels half-fed, but in the end when nothing but half a roti is left for her, she cries silently. The beauty of Amarkant's writing lies in its simplicity, which the critic Pranaya Krishna described as “the most difficult pursuit”. Amarkant goes deep into the sociology as well as the psychology of his characters without any cathartic drama and turns them into authentic representatives of our social margins.