Godaan is Premchand's last finished novel, published in 1936, the year he died. Most readers and critics count it as his masterpiece, and it is often called the great novel of the Indian village. Its subject is a poor farmer's life, and through it the debt, caste and custom that held rural North India in place.
What the novel is about
Hori is a small farmer in a village in Awadh. He has a few acres, a sharp-tongued and loyal wife, Dhaniya, a restless son, Gobar, and debts to more people than he can count. What he wants is a cow of his own, partly for the milk and partly because a cow at the door means a family still has its standing. The novel follows what that wish costs him.
Around Hori are the people who live off men like him: the moneylender, the village priest, the landlord's agents and the panchayat elders, each taking a share in the name of interest, religion or custom. Hori, honest and anxious to keep his place, rarely refuses them. Gobar sees things differently and leaves for the city, and the gap between father and son is one of the book's quiet threads.
A second story runs in parallel among the rich and educated of the town: the landlord Rai Sahab, the philosophy professor Mehta, the doctor Malti and their circle. Premchand uses them to look at the class that talks about reform while the village pays for everything. The two worlds touch only now and then, and that is part of his point.
Why it matters
Before Godaan, the peasant in Hindi fiction was often a figure of pity or of rustic charm. Premchand writes Hori as a whole person, stubborn, proud, sometimes foolish and very human, and he refuses to give the story the rescue a reader keeps hoping for. The book's picture of how debt works in a village, one small loan and one small favour at a time, is still recognizable.
It was filmed in Hindi in 1963, and it is a fixture of Hindi literature courses in India.
How to read it
Godaan is long, and the town chapters move more slowly than the village ones. Our Premchand guide suggests reading five short stories and a short novel such as Nirmala first. Then read Godaan a few chapters at a time and keep track of who owes what to whom. The dialogue is the best part: read it aloud if you can, and keep a dictionary for village and Persian-derived words.
Where to find it
Premchand died in October 1936, so his Hindi text is in the public domain in India. Hindi Wikisource and Hindi Samay carry his work, and scanned editions turn up on the Internet Archive. Our guide to free sources explains how to search them, and public domain in India explains why an English translation is a separate work with its own copyright.
Sahitya Chintan does not host or sell copies of this book. This note describes the work and points to the kinds of places where it can be read legally.
Questions readers ask
What does Godaan mean?
Godaan is the gift of a cow, a ritual donation to a Brahmin made for the good of a dying person's soul. The title points to Hori's lifelong wish to own a cow and to the cost of religious duty for a family that can barely eat, and by the last pages it has taken on a bitter meaning.
Is Godaan hard to read?
The Hindi is plain, but the novel is long and the city chapters are slower than the village ones. Read a few Premchand stories first so you know his voice, then take Godaan a few chapters at a time.
Is there an English translation?
Yes. Gordon C. Roadarmel's The Gift of a Cow (1968) is the long-standing English version, and there are newer translations too. Translations are in copyright, so buy or borrow them; the Hindi original is public domain in India.