SOURCE: A review of Between Tears and Laughter, in World Literature Today, Vol. 66, No. 3, Summer, 1992, pp. 580-81.

In the following review, Fisher comments on the major themes of the stories collected in Between Tears and Laughter.

The 1991 edition of Between Tears and Laughter is a reissue of the collection of short stories that was first published, under the same title, in 1973. Four stories have been added that were not part of the 1973 volume: "Savitri," "May the Ridge Rise," "Night Falls on Shiva's Hills," and "Sati Sapni." The twenty-one selections included in the current edition represent vintage Mulk Raj Anand.

Here, as in such collections as The Barber's Trade Union and Other Stories, Anand has brought the concept of a Western literary genre—that of the short story—into the Asian, Indian context. In telling the tales found in Between Tears and Laughter he has drawn upon both the...