Nandashankar Mehta (1835-1905) is most well-known for the first ever work in the form of a novel, Karan Ghelo (1866), in Gujarati language, in which until then literary contributions were mainly poetic, with only a handful of works in the prose form. Nandashankar lived during a dynamic period in Gujarat when the region was socially and politically transformed with the introduction of a new style of teaching and governance. This biography by his son Vinayakrao, originally written in Gujarati, provides a fascinating account of Nandshankar’s life with a broad overview of an era that eventually brought about the birth of the modern Gujarat State.

The author of the biography, Vinayak N. Mehta (1885-1940), was the third and youngest son of Nandshankar Tuljashankar Mehta to reach adulthood. After graduation from Elphinstone College in Bombay, he went to Cambridge, UK for higher studies and towards the end also took and passed the most difficult Indian Civil Service examination. After returning home he joined the I.C.S. cadre and became part an early batch of non-Europeans who were admitted to that elite service with the colonial Government of India. The translator, Ashish Mehta, born in Bombay during the eve of colonial rule in India, was educated there and in the United States. He is an Emeritus Professor in the College of Engineering at the University of Florida in Gainesville. His professional writings, mainly academic articles and books over a 45-year tenure, have been in coastal hydraulics and applied marine physics in general. In 2000 he received the Hans Albert Einstein Award in hydraulics from the American Society of Civil Engineers. This work is his first and thus far only contribution to something other than science and is underpinned by his life-long amateurish interest in history. He is a great-great-grandson of Nandshankar.