Here are nineteen brilliant stories from Indian writers, both new and established, which explore an exciting range of themes and situations from the fantastic to the quietly realistic, the enigmatic to the expected, the melodramatic to the humorous. Seventeen of these stories were first published between 1989 and 1992 by discerning editors of magazines and journals in eleven regonal languages. They have been translated for this volume by sensitive artists who have managed to capture the nuances and rhythms of everyday speech that made the originals special, The translations, along with the two originally written in English, are being published here for the first time Nominated for the Katha Awards by respected writers, scholars and critics, these stories reinforce the claim to excellence that Katha earned last year with the first of its Katha Prize Stories series.