Across the Black Waters by Mulk Raj Anand

Across the Black Waters Reviews

• 
  Rajiv Chopra

  I came upon this book when I read another book called "If I Die Here, Who Will Remember Me?". That book, by Vedica Kant, is a brief history - with lots of photographs - of the Indian soldiers who lived and died in World War I. I had said then, that it is a book that is well worth reading because it chronicles the history of these little known soldiers.
  
  Mulk Raj Anand's book is also based on the events of World War I, and it follows the lives of a fictional battalion as they cross the "Black Waters" into France. It speaks of the incessant sound of warfare; the more liberal attitudes of the French to Indians, as compared to the British, who instilled a sense of inferiority in Indians; the petty attitude of the Indian NCOS and a bit more.
  
  It follows, largely, Lal Singh into battle, until his final capture by the Germans. His fate is left for us to imagine.
  
  It's a very good book. It's a very good book indeed. There is a sense of pathos, anger, and sadness in the book. Why did we have to send people to fight the war of another nation?
• 
  Victoria

  A very moving and compelling book. It gives you a very sharp feel for what the Indian soldiers traversing the ocean to fight in WWI went through, from the boredom and fear and cold in the trenches to the street parades and the days spent in the towns and countryside of France. Anand captures the social codes and the shared experiences that alternately divide and connect the characters, and he writes with insight about the sepoys, the French civilians, and the British soldiers and the relationships between them all. Lalu is an unforgettable protagonist, and the novel takes you into his experience of WWI with compassion and humor for him and the other characters he meets.
• 
  Kookie

  Harrowing and claustrophobic, it really gives you a feel for what it would have been like to be in the trenches of WWI. Add to that the disorientation of being a young man from a small village in India suddenly awash in European culture and this book is unlike any war book I've read before. Recommended.
• 
  Anil

  Its a real fiction.if you realy want to feel the brutality of war go for this book."GUNS will not going to offer a solution even the soldier in the battle field knows that"
• 
  Dave Morris

  The surreality of WW1 has never been more intense than when seen through the eyes of Indian soldiers brought over to fight for the British Empire. It's fascinating to see the Indian soldiers' complex reaction to Europe - the Sahibs they privately sometimes call "rape-daughters" while at other times being respectful or even in awe of them. The clash of gentle rural mindsets with horrible violence. The awakening of sexuality alongside the threat of imminent death. The way that monumentally unsettling developments (such as a humiliated soldier's suicide) are washed away by the sheer onslaught of impressions and experiences. It's one of those war stories that's about all human existence, intensified in a crucible of monstrous events.
  
  Points to note: "rape-daughter" and "rape-mother" confused me as insults until I realized they'd be better translated as "daughter-rapist" and "mother-rapist". It was a surprise that the Indians (from the north) thought the Germans were a proper size but the British infantrymen were small.
  
  There are dozens of typos, often obscuring the meaning. If I read it again I'll get a different edition.
• 
  Siddhartha Das

  A war story and the helplessness of the lower ranks in such a war is beautifully displayed. The kind of conversations that a normal sepoy has with oneself.
• 
  Pushkar Mankar

  A wonderfully edifying and intimate portrayal of life of an Indian soldier fighting in WW1.
• 
  Melanie

  I found this difficult to follow. A sad commentary on the horrors of war. DNF
• 
  William Kirkland

  That British, French and German soldiers fought and died in their millions on the Western Front in WW I is well known. That Punjabi, Pashtun, Baluchi and Gurkha Indians, Hindu, Muslim and Sikh, added their tens of thousands of bodies, hardly at all. But they were there, some two army divisions (about 24,000 men) arriving in Marseilles late September, 1914, with many thousands to follow, 140,000 to France by war’s end. So it’s a treat to find an eye-opening and compelling novel of such men written by one who knew a great deal of what he wrote.
  
  Across the Black Waters (1939/1980) by
  Mulk Raj Anand, follows the experiential arc of many soldier-written novels of that war: arrival -- excitement, bewilderment; first combat --fear, courage; a rest behind the lines and daily life --washing, lice picking, talking about women, talking about military stupidity; return to battle, grotesque deaths and injuries; departure. As others of this particular war novel genre, the deeper backgrounds of familial relationships, love interests, place and history, of Stendhal or Tolstoy are not present. Nor are the minute accounts of battle and human psychology we read in later novels, from Norman Mailer and James Jones to say, Karl Marlantes (
  Matterhorn,) or Tim O'Brien (
  The Things They Carried.) The deep questions of God's goodness or malevolence, death, duty, cowardice and conscience appear but are not weighed and measured man by man.
  
  Which isn't to say these novels have little to share with us. In fact, much. And Across Deep Waters, more than many.
  
  - See more at:
  http://www.allinoneboat.org/2016/04/0...
• 
  Manish

  India contributed close to a million men in different capacities during the Great War. But inspite of this, the subject has never captured the imagination of our writers and historians. Search for Indians and the First World war and all that you get are some Wikipedia links, Dr. Santanu Das' work on the subject and a smattering of non fiction books that deal with the topic.Amitav Ghosh, in his blog has heroically translated a large section of one of the few first personal memoirs of an Indian soldier – “On to Baghdad”, written by Sisir Sarbadhikari who saw action in the Middle East during the siege of Kut. Read more at:
  http://amitavghosh.com/blog/?p=4404
  
  It was only after some intense internet search on the topic that I chanced upon Mulk Raj Anand’s "Across the Black Waters' that deals with the Indian experience in the battlefields of France – Ypres to be more precise. “Across the Black Waters” is the second part of a trilogy and is an exhaustive account of the experiences of a bunch of Indian sepoys who find themselves bewildered in the land of the ‘goras’. Their attitudes, conflicts and confusion over the meaninglessness of the war of the sahibs definitely made for some interesting reading. Personally, I’m now atleast able to imagine what it must have felt for the folks of Punjab, Uttaranchal and Madras to be confronted with the misery of the trenches during that fateful period.
• 
  Nallasivan V.

  This is the only Indian English novel set during the world war I and deals directly with the role of Indian army in WWI. Just the importance of the subject itself should have made the book hugely popular in India. But it is rarely known. This should be more widely read. Should probably be read in schools instead of books like the scarlet pimpernel and the count of Monte Christo!