The author, Richard Crasta, whose novel "The Revised Kama Sutra" was published in ten countries to great reviews, and was called very funny by Kurt Vonnegut, has campaigned for equal freedom of expression for people of all nationalities and ethnic backgrounds. He has refused to be patronized and pigeonholed by the Western establishment as an "ethnic writer" with a different set of rules--a system he describes as literary apartheid. This collects the Prefaces to his major books, including unpublished versions.
Prefaces once used to be a high art form, and in a few famous books of the past, the Prefaces turned out to be of more consequence and of more literary and historical importance than the rest of the work. This 11,000-word book, composed almost entirely of Prefaces, is a window into Richard Crasta's mind and constitutes in effect his literary manifesto. It shows how his thinking evolved over 20 years of writing, he having now arrived at the point where he simply considers himself to be a citizen of the planet, with loyalty only to humanity. This collection includes the Preface to fiery "The Unauthorized India", of which only 200 copies were printed, most were destroyed or thrown in the garbage, and only one copy remains in the author's possession. It also includes the never published original preface to "The Killing of an Author"--passionate, vulnerable, warm. One of the most lively prefaces in here is the "Anti-Literary Manifesto" that forms the preface to "What We All Need". Richard Crasta presents the alternative view, the non-mainstream view, the literary criticism you have not been exposed to, because it is not Establishment-sponsored. To ignore it is to collude with the Establishment and its fascism, to be a hater of minorities and minority viewpoints, and to accept the Establishment viewpoint like good sheep.
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