In the Afternoon of Time: An Autobiography

Hindi Litterateur Harivansh Rai Bachchan was born in Allahabad in 1907, and acquired immense popularity in the 1930s through Madhushala, a long poem inspired by the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. Some three decades later, by now well established as a major figure on the Hindi literary scene, Bachchan wrote the first of four volumes of his autobiography, which was to earn widespread praise from critics and readers alike. In the Afternoon of Time is creative abridgement of these four volumes, translated into English for the first time. These intensely personal memoirs span several generations, tracing the history of Bachchan’s forebears, who came to live in Allahabad from a small village in Uttar Pradesh. With a bittersweet tone that recalls the lyricism of Madhushala, the author draws a portrait of provincial life in the first decades of the century, and describes with remarkable candour the struggles, joys and heartbreak of his early life. The narrative dwells at length on the death of his young wife and the ensuing trauma; remarriage, and a teaching assignment in the English department of Allahabad University; his Ph.D work on W.B. Yeats in Cambridge; a long stint as Hindi officer in the Ministry of External Affairs; an interlude in the Rajya Sabha; and the meteoric rise of his elder son Amitabh in the world of Hindi cinema. In his brilliant translation, Rupert Snell has succeeded in communicating the power and intensity that made the original work a classic in the genre of autobiographical writing in India.