Author: Sunil Gangopadhyay
Translator(s): Enakshi Chatterjee
Publisher: Sahitya Akademi
Year: 2004
Language: English
Pages: 709
ISBN/UPC (if available): 812601895X
Description
East-West (Part Two): Outside a plush hotel in New York, an Indian youth is seen waiting for an appointment. He is desperately in need of a job. He is Atin, the young boy of part One who gets mixed up in politics, and is obliged to leave the country, much against his will. His is still a revolutionary at heart, he hates his exile in America.
The large canvas of this novel covers three continents, but more particularly the dramatic events following the partition of India, the political unrest in West Bengal, the plight of the refugees and the birth of a new nation, Bangladesh. The social and political reality instead of remaining a backdrop takes on center stage where simultaneously individual lives unfold, each with it’s own account of love, hat, passion and betrayal. The author takes a dispassionate look at the Naxal revolutionaries, exposing their vulnerability, the colossal tragedy of so many promising lives coming to a pointless end. On the other side, in the other Bengal, events move to an inexorable climax, while the fictional characters flit across the stage, the shadow of actual historical figures loom large-Ayub Khan, Yahya Khan, General Niazi and the day by day account of how the mighty Pakistan Army, one of the best in the world was doomed to a most humiliating defeat.
This novel of epic proportions is an unique experiment in blending fiction with facts, an attempt to truthfully capture a swiftly moving course of events, a compelling novel difficult to put down.
TRANSLATOR
ENAKSHI CHATTERJEE, a bilingual writer in Bangla and English has won the Rabindra Puraskar for Parmanu Jignasa, a book on the history of science, written jointly with her scientist husband Dr Santimay. She has a number of books to her credit-biographies, children’s fiction, science fiction, popular science and translations. The wide spectrum of Bengali fiction translated by her range from Tarasankar on one end to new and emerging writers like Sohrab Hossain on the other. She is equally at ease with the reverse kind of translation, the most notable being Satpatro, Bengali rendering of Vikram Seth’s A Suitable Boy.