FROM MASTI TO MAHADEVA (AN ANTHOLOGY OF KANNADA SHORT STORIES IN ENGLISH)

Book excerpt: I have planned and designed this representative Anthology of Kannada short Stories in English (Fifteen stories).My main objective is to offer the best short stories in English. The seeds of Kannada short story as a literary form can be traced back to Katha Sarasttisagara, Panchantantra, Jataka tales and great oral folk legends and wonderful tales. Some of the oral and written stories were carried to the West mostly by traders, wanderers, monks and cultural ambassadors. They also carried with them the two greatest epics like Ramayana and Mahabharata, Vedas and Upanishads. The travellers brought back the great stories/epics of the West like Illiad, Odyssey and Biblical stories. With the invention of printing press in Germany in 16th century it became possible to reach out to countries far and wide through the medium of print. The short story as a genre developed steadily over the centuries and it lost its amorphous body and acquired a well defined order, arrangement and form.