Hari Kunzru addresses the European Writers' Parliament on the challenges facing writers. He argues that writers must help shape the new "space of literature" created by digital technologies and networks. While open sharing has benefits, commercial forces also threaten to undervalue writers' work. Kunzru urges writers to engage with engineers to build an information space that protects values like neutrality, privacy and archiving, and ensures writers can live and work productively.

1. Munshi Premchand
Munshi Premchand (Born July 31, 1880– Died October 8, 1936) was a famous Hindi Novelist and
Story writer of modern Hindi-Urdu literature.
Premchand was born on July 31, 1880 in the village Lamhi, near Varanasi. His Father's name was
Munshi Ajaib Lal, who was a clerk in the post office, and his mother's name was Anandi. She was a
housewife.
His childhood name was Dhanpat Rai ("master of wealth") while his uncle, Shree Mahabir, a rich
landowner, used to call him Nawab (Prince). His early education was at a local madarsa (a muslim
school) under a maulvi, where Premchand studied Urdu. Premchand's parents died in his young age
- his mother died when he was seven and his father also died while he was sixteen or seventeen
and was still a student. now only he was left responsible for his stepmother and step-siblings.
Premchand was married early, at the age of fifteen, to a girl from a neighboring village but the
marriage was completely a failure and, when he left the village in 1899, the girl returned to her
village. Several years later, in the year 1906, in response to an advertisement in a local paper from a
man who wanted to marry off his child-widow daughter, Premchand married a second time to
Shivrani Devi. She was a decent lady.
Now we should talk about Premchand's Writing. The main beauty of Premchand's writings is his
interesting story-telling and use of a very simple language. His novels presents the problems of the
rural peasant classes very Handsomely. Premchand avoided the use of highly Sanskritized Hindi (as
it was the common practice in those days among Popular Hindi writers), but rather he used the
dialect of the common people (the aam aadmi of India).
Example of His Writing :
"Maasik vetan to purnamasi ka chand hai.......
Upri aay behta hua srot hai jisse sadev pyas bujhti hai..........
Ladkiyan hai ki ghaas foos ki tarah badhti jaati hai.......
main to kagare ka vriksh hun jaane kab gir padoon.
-"Namak ka Daroga" (Premchand)
He wrote about 300 short stories and several novels(Upanyas) as well as many
essays(Nibandh) and letters(Patra). He also wrote some great plays(Naatak) and did some
translations(Anuvaad). Later, Many of Premchand's stories have been translated into English and
Russian Languages.
Famous stories of Munshi Premchand (Unordered List):
IIdgaah
Boodhi Kaki
Bade Ghar ki Beti
Ishvariy Nyay
Do Belon ki katha

2. Panch Parmeshwar
Kafan
Namak ka Daroga
Poos ki Raat
Bade Babu
Godaan , His last novel, is considered one of the finest Hindi novels of all time.The protagonist, Hori,
is a poor peasant, and desperately longs for a cow, a symbol of wealth and prestige in the rural
India. The story of godaan depicts the human beings' deep-rooted beliefs, and their ability to survive
and uphold these beliefs despite great misery.
Eureopean writer
Julio Cortázar > Quotes > Quotable Quote
“All European writers are „slaves of their baptism,‟ if I may paraphrase Rimbaud; like it or not, their
writing carries baggage from an immense and almost frightening tradition; they accept that tradition
or they fight against it, it inhabits them, it is their familiar and their succubus. Why write, if
everything has, in a way, already been said? Gide observed sardonically that since nobody listened,
everything has to be said again, yet a suspicion of guilt and superfluity leads the European

3. intellectual to the most extreme refinements of his trade and tools, the only way to avoid paths too
much traveled. Thus the enthusiasm that greets novelties, the uproar when a writer has succeeded in
giving substance to a new slice of the invisible; merely recall symbolism, surrealism, the „nouveau
roman‟: finally something truly new that neither Ronsard, nor Stendahl , nor Proust imagined. For a
moment we can put aside our guilt; even the epigones begin too believe they are doing something
new. Afterwards, slowly, they begin to feel European again and each writer still has his albatross
around his neck.”
LOUDSPEAKER
HARI KUNZRU: ADDRESS TO THE EUROPEAN WRITERS PARLIAMENT
Author
Editorial team
Posted on
11 March 2011
This is the first of what will become regular cross-posts from international writers or journals with similar political or aesthetic
sensibilities to Overland.
Over the last few years, the Overland blog has built a small but flourishing community of writers debating politics and culture
from a largely Australian perspective. The new cross-posts aim to build on those discussions, and forge some links with
likeminded people overseas.
Hari Kunzru is the author of the novels The Impressionist (2002), Transmission (2004) and My
Revolutions (2007), as well as a short story collection,Noise (2006). His work has been translated into twenty-one languages and
won him prizes including the Somerset Maugham award, the Betty Trask prize of the Society of Authors and a British Book
Award. In 2003Granta named him one of its twenty best young British novelists. Lire magazine named him one of its 50
‘écrivains pour demain’. He is Deputy President of English PEN, a patron of the Refugee Council and a member of the editorial
board of Mute magazine. His short stories and journalism have appeared in diverse publications including The New York

4. Times, Guardian, New Yorker, Washington Post, Times of India, Wired and New Statesman. His fourth novel, Gods Without Men,
will be published in August 2011. He lives in New York City.
25 November 2010
What are we doing here?
I’ve been imagining other parliaments, parallel to this one – parliaments of doctors firemen and painters – dedicated to discussing
the European problems proper to their professions. Perhaps I’m missing the point. If such events aren’t being organised then it is
because we, as writers, are expected to fulfil a function that doctors and firemen and painters cannot.
You have accepted this invitation, presumably because like me, and you have a particular sense of the role of the writer. I don’t
believe the writer is merely an entertainer, though we certainly shouldn’t be above entertainment, above giving pleasure. Nor are
we just journalists, recorders of the doings of the world, or apolitical bohemians, dedicated to aesthetic shock. We may be any of
these things, but this is not all we are. As lovers of language, as people who are dedicated to it and who value it very highly, we
are – whether we like it or not – always already engaged in the political struggles of our day, many of which take place on the
terrain of language – its use to produce social and national identity, its use to frame laws and norms, its use to define what it
means to be a human, to lead a good or just or valuable life.
There’s a saying that culture is something that is done to us, but art is something we do to culture. We’re here in the 2010 City of
Culture – an accolade it seems slightly superfluous to bestow on Istanbul, which is so visibly the product of millennia of
European civilization. But we should be here to do something to culture, to set some terms for the future. There are many things
we could spend the next few days discussing but I’d like to propose three areas where I think we can do useful work.
The first is in what I would call the space of literature. New technologies of communication and distribution of information have
already changed the space in which we, as writers, live and work. The transnational networks are now the place in which we
make our writing, where we research, where our work is archived and where we reach our readers. They are not, it goes without
saying, a natural space, but one whose protocols and conventions are set – by engineers, by administrators, and by the companies
who own the infrastructure and make the equipment we use to access it. It’s already the case that without access to the internet,
people are denied participation in much of world culture. I think the production of this new space is too important to be left to
engineers, administrators and corporate executives. We, as writers ought to help set the terms. Of those three groups, our natural
allies are the engineers. We should be talking to them. What kind of information space do we, as writers, want to occupy? Where
do we want to live and work? What values should be embedded in that space, what protections, what sanctions?
Issues such as net neutrality (the equality of all information traffic), censorship, data collection, personal privacy, and the lack of
a persistent archive are of great importance to us. But there are two major tendencies emerging, both of which are having a
profound impact.
The first is the emergence of open and collaborative ways of producing and sharing information. The highest profile example of
this is Wikipedia. We should support an ethic of openness. However, in this world of sharing and infinite reproducibility, the
value of our labor is being driven down

5. Boris Kelly on 11 March 2011 at 4.53 pm said:
Thanks Hari for agreeing to be the first of our international guest posts on the Overland blog.
A few weeks ago I was asked by the Overland editors to go forth, beyond our virtual shores and find
writing that spoke to the interests and concerns of our readers. I chose Hari’s address to the European
Writers’ Parliament because it raises a number of important challenges facing writers all around
the world.
There is so much to comment on in the address but I was especially struck by Hari’s first two points.
The notion of a ‘space of literature’ is a powerful one underpinned as it is by the velocity and scope of
information technology. Hari’s points out that
…the production of this new space is too important to be left to engineers, administrators and corporate
executives. We, as writers ought to help set the terms. Of those three groups, our natural allies are the
engineers. We should be talking to them. What kind of information space do we, as writers, want to
occupy? Where do we want to live and work? What values should be embedded in that space, what
protections, what sanctions?
In the light of internet kill switch deployments, corporate collaboration in the shutting down of free
speech (e.g. Amazon, PayPal in the Wikileaks case) and, yes, the mooted internet filter here in Australia,
writers need to be vigilant in their protection of a democratic, open space for writing; a kind of virtual
Tahrir Square in which technology is used to promote rather than control debate, intellectual exchange
and collaboration. Indeed, this space should not be left to governments and corporate business to dictate
how it should be used and by whom.
The second point of particular interest to me in Hari’s address is related to the first. The ‘privatisation of
public space’ leads to an undervaluing of the work of the writer. Witness the recent sale of the Huffington
Post, a publication dependent in large part on a swarm of underpaid writers who have certainly added
value to the company by providing content but leave empty handed when the boss flogs the company.
Indeed, what is the value of the writer’s work? In particular, how do we balance commercial imperatives
with the urgency of the times and the role we have to play in creating a viable future? How do we put
writers at the centre of the global publishing business model? Or do we desert it and find new ways of
owning the process of distribution?