A review by interlibraryloan
Untouchable by Mulk Raj Anand

4.0

The caste system is something utterly unknown to a Western audience, and not even reading about it brings our minds closer to what it means to live within it, to live oppressed under it, to have one's very essence boiled down to nothing more than defilement, something that has been enforced for thousands of years. Anand's narration style is strong and reveals to the reader Bakha's convoluted psyche, plagued by the effects of being an outcaste (a sweeper, no less, something beneath even a slave in that his essence is boiled down to nothing more than filth) as well as the events of his morning poisoning his day in whole. Insightful and detached, Bakha feels like a real individual, not simply a one-dimensional interpreter of the world and philosophy about him.

Anand closes the novel with the presentation of three solutions to the case of untouchability, at least for Bakha, making the structure of the novel simple and easy to get through, despite the profound message behind it.