Author: Bhagwaticharan Verma
Translator(s)/ Editors(s): Tripti Jain
Publisher: Sahitya Akademi
Year: 2010
Language: English
Pages: 650
ISBN/UPC (if available): 9788126026692
Description
Fractured Images (Bhule Bisre Chitra) is the story of four generations of a family. Beginning in the 80’s of the nineteenth century and coming to an end in the 30’s of the twentieth century – the beginning of the Salt Satyagraha and the Civil Disobedience Movement.
The political backdrop is sketched with great skill and sensitivity, highlighting the interactions and conflicts of the social groups and classes – zamindars, industrialists, administrators and political leaders.
The novel is about human beings caught in a rapidly changing milieu, their hopes and despair, their bewilderment and struggle to keep up with human values, and the sudden fall from grace because of emotional upheavals – and the anguish of that fall.
The novel was published in 1959 and Verma received the Sahitya Akademi Award for it in 1961. it was his fifth novel and his most significant work in many ways. Analyzing highly complex situations and social problems of that time while telling an interesting story, it is one novel which can truly be called an epic.
ABOUT THE TRANSLATOR
Tripti Jain is a political scientist and taught in Government College, Ajmer for over thirty years. Now retired, she is a freelance translator, and has translated for Sahitya Akademi, National Book Trust and the Central Institute of Indian Languages, Mysore. She won the Katha South Asian Translation Contest 1999- 2000 for her translation of a Punjabi story. She has recently translated Changiya Rukh for Oxford University Press.