Hats and Doctors offers English readers the opportunity to savour, for the first time, the work of Upendranath Ashk, one of Hindi literature's best known and most controversial authors. The stories in this collection often display a wry sense of humour, such as 'The Dal Eaters' in which a family of cheapskates journeys to Kashmir. While Ashk's satirical eye is employed to great effect in 'The Cartoon Hero', where a hapless traveller encounters a petty politician on a train, his talent for capturing human frailties is amply evident in 'Furlough' and 'In the Insane Asylum' two thought provoking stories that later became part of his novel Girti Divarein and finally, stories such as 'Mr Ghatpande' and 'Hats and Doctors' give the reader a glimpse of some of Ashk's primary personal preoccupations, his health and his hats. Exhibiting a lightness of touch and a deep engagement with the human condition, these stories come alive in Daisy Rockwell's delightful translation.