Author: Ritwik Ghatak
Publisher: Srishti
Year: 2001
Language: English
Pages: 227
ISBN/UPC (if available): 8187075554
Description
Ritwik Ghatak, the famous film-maker, is known all over India and abroad for some of the greatest films made in India. But his short stories - works of miniaturist art in their own right - are less known. The stories collected in this volume speak well for themselves as much as they remind his audience of another facet of his versatility which was eclipsed by the more obvious virtuosity of his filmography.
The stories reflect his protest against the wickedness, villainy and oppression he saw around him, his romantic nostalgia for a lost El Dorado, his intense feeling for man's natural environment - the land, the sea and the sky. While the stories mirror the ethos of the tumultuous decade of India in the 40s, they go beyond that to reveal a vision of life that encompasses a compassion for human frailties and a deep commitment to humanism.
Deftly crafted, easily rivaling the best in the genre, these stories are not only a living part of his development as a creative artist - as a writer and as a filmmaker - they are also essential for an understanding of the totality of being that went into the making of his films.
The volume claims our attention as an important addition to the Ghatak archive, as a substantial source material for any ongoing research on his films.
THE TRANSLATOR:
RANI RAY reads English at Bedford College, London and University of California. She has translated, Suchitra Bhattacharya's novel Falling Apart, Anita Agnihotri's Those Who Had Known Love, and has co-translated two anthologies of Bangla short stories, Homes in Emptiness and a Treasury of Bangla Stories.