Book Review | Premchand’s grandchild curates her memories
Deccan ChronicleI’d never heard of Sara Rai until I saw a book with her name on it a couple of weeks ago—Raw Umber: A Memoir. It’s a series of essays about Sara Rai’s 1960s childhood and I am obsessed with writing set in the period from the mid-1940s to the mid-1970s, that time when India was birthed and taking her first steps as a nation. Only when I had the book in my hands did I realise that Sara Rai is the granddaughter of that great writer in Hindi, Premchand. Her admission, in the essay titled ‘The Ancestor in the Cupboard’, that she was somewhat embarrassed by being Premchand’s granddaughter, having only read a couple of his stories in her Hindi literature textbooks, which made them far from appealing, while meeting wherever she went people who could recite from memory entire passages from his works.
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Book review | 'Raw Umber': Sara Rai's lyrical memoir unveils the hues of Hindi literature's legacy
Firstpost
Sara Rai’s Raw Umber: A lush portrait of Hindi literature’s first family
Live Mint
Review of Sara Rai’s Raw Umber — A Memoir: Remembrance of a lost world
The Hindu
Book Review: ‘Raw Umber: A Memoir’ by Sara Rai
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