BY THE EDITOR

The Government of Madras have removed the ban on Malapalli, the famous Telugu novel. The author, Barrister Lakshminarayana, was in prison for one year for having championed the cause of the poor ryots of Palnad, and at the end of the term, he produced this magnum opus of his - a veritable epic in prose. The first three parts were published, reviewed, and read with avidity by an admiring public. The fourth and final part was in the printers' hands, when a landlord-ridden Government smelt Bolshevism in a novel of contemporary life and procured its suppression. Sjt. Lakshminarayana, with whom sympathy for the oppressed is a passion, dealt, amongst others, with the life and sufferings of the Panchama agricultural labourers, and the inevitable conflict between them and the powerful Sudra landlords. He drew touching pictures of the life of the lowly farm- servants and of their leader Sangadas-literally 'servant of society'-who was done to death by an irate master, and of his adventurous brother Venkatadas, who turned a leader of banditti to relieve himself and his comrades from grinding poverty. This was anathema to the men in power, and for over five years now, this precious book has been lost to the Andhra public. Written in the spoken Telugu of to-day, and full of the idealism of the saint and the dreamer that Sjt Lakshminarayana is, Malapalli is the greatest of our social novels. In its range and power, it is greater than even Viresalingam's Rajasekhara Charitra and Lakshminarasimham's Ramachandra Vijayam. It is the nearest approach, in Telugu, to Victor Hugo's Les Miserables. We rejoice to think that, with a few minor alterations, the book will once again receive the light of publicity.