From Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain (1880-1932), the writer of the feminist utopian fantasy ‘Sultana’s Dream’, come these tales of gumptious wit, describing the twists and turns of India’s two-hundred-year relationship with the imperial British.

Freedom Fables begins with the two eponymous fables, both compact in form but temporally vast. The first story ‘Muktiphal’ (translated in this volume as ‘The Freedom Tree’) traces the rise of and divisions within India’s Congress party. ‘Gyanphal’ or ‘The Tree of Knowledge’, the second fable, begins in the Garden of Eden and moves swiftly to an idealised Kanakadwipa where a trading company beguiles the prosperous country and proceeds to ruin it. Throughout both, the fantastic floats easily over mere facts. Adam and Eve, the Almighty, djinns, paris, demons, and Mayavi magicians: these classic characters play decisive, intriguing roles.

These major political satires are accompanied in this edition by six essays and two poems, which the intrepid Hossain wrote over a period of seventeen years. Interwoven through her writings are ideals that endure even today: education and emancipation for women, dignity for those living in the subcontinent, and freedom from colonial rule and influence.