Author: Krishna Datta
Publisher: Srishti
Year: 2001
Language: English
Pages: 399
ISBN/UPC (if available): 8187075309
Description
This novel is a remarkable social document in which individuals grapple with the far-reaching issues of nationality and belonging, even as they move from a domestic scene of socially arranged child marriages, to the willfully exercised love choice a century later.
The expensive canvas of Walking From the Gallows sweeps from the deepest, densest, snake-infested jungles of Burma, to pan out to cover the entire Indian subcontinent, venturing even, to touch the shores of imperial, while England. The majestic proportions of this saga, spanning four generations of a bhadralok Bengali family, is eloquent tribute to the intrepid human will to survive against the heaviest odds - of poverty, feuds, wars and the divisive onslaught of Partition.
The all-embracing historic force of imperialism and nationalism becomes the backdrop for changing times. This makes the novel a remarkable social document in which individuals grapple with the far-reaching issues of nationality and belonging, even as they more from a domestic scene of socially arranged child marriages, to the willfully exercised love choice a century later.
From the certainties of the joint family to the heartbreaking independent loneliness of nuclear units. Yet the last word lies in the triumphant grit, which lies in the bursting pride of the Duttas, in the family name, which becomes the spur to the chronicling of this tale.