Dariyalal

Thema for young readers

Indian Children's Classics in Translation

Gunvantrai Acharya (1900-65), one of the masters of Gujarati literature, was fascinated by the maritime past of the Gujaratis, who had been exploring the seas for centuries. In his novels and stories, he evokes the seas and mariners, traders and pirates, and the strange lands and peoples they encountered on their adventures and voyages. In his Dariyalal (1938), a classic of Gujarati children's literature, set in a Gujarati settlement in Zanzibar in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, a ruthless Indian slave driver has a change of heart and exercises his valour, power and determination to compel a whole community to give up trading in slaves in eastern Africa.

Ms Kamal Sanyal has translated stories and plays from both Gujarati and Marathi, winning the prestigious Katha Award.