Dudiya: In Your Burning Land

Paper Type: Book Print Paper | Size: 197mm x 127mm; 220pp
Black and white
ISBN-13: 978-93-91125-65-3

 395

Civil servant Dilip Pawar is posted as Election Observer in the Naxal-infested districts of Chhattisgarh. What happens in the next seventy-six days of his posting till the general election results are announced changes his outlook on life forever. He experiences firsthand the Naxal menace which is a burning reality in Chhattisgarh today.

There he meets Dudiya, a spirited young Adivasi girl whose destiny is trapped between the two blades of a pair of scissors, the state administration on the one hand and the Naxals on the other. Having no way out she joins the Naxals as a young girl and trains with them in the remote and inaccessible Abujmarh mountains. However, she ends up feeling disillusioned and trapped, and surrenders to the police. But now she is a refugee branded as a traitor by the Naxals who are gunning for her life.

This fast-paced novel featuring thrilling encounters, ambushes and races against time, highlights the burning issue of Naxalism plaguing Chhattisgarh and other Naxal-infested states of India. The poverty-stricken tribals caught in this vicious circle of Naxal and state violence and vendetta have no choice but to live under the shadow of guns blazing from both sides.



Vishwas Patil
Vishwas Patil
Author

Vishwas Patil is one of the most prolific and best-known authors in Marathi. He has won upwards of forty awards, including the prestigious Sahitya Akademi award and the Indira Goswami National Literary Award of Assam. Of his eighteen novels, many have been translated into major Indian languages, as also English. His celebrated novels include Jhadajhadti (Dirge for the Dammed), Panipat, Mahanayak, Sambhaji, Lust for Lalbag and Shivaji Mahasamrat: Zhanzhavat (Shivaji Mahasamrat: Whirlwind).

Nadeem Khan
Nadeem Khan
Translator

Nadeem Khan has been a teacher of English for fifty years. After retiring as the Head, Department of Languages, from an Amravati college, for the next eight years he served as the Regional Director of the Western Regional Centre of the prestigious Indian Institute of Mass Communication. He has translated fifteen Marathi books into English, including Vishwas Patil’s Panipat and Shivaji Mahasamrat: Whirlwind.