Author: Samaresh Basu
Translator(s): Sumanta Banerjee
Publisher: Thema
Year: 2003
Language: English
Pages: 186
ISBN/UPC (if available): 8186017461
Description
The present collection of Samaresh Basu's stories, in English translation. The other hurdle facing anyone translating Samaresh Basu's stories is his style of abruptly shifting from the present to the past tense, and vice versa-which read quite smoothly in Bengali, but may often sound jarring in an English translation. The author tried to maintain the flow of his narration while rendering such sentences into English, but he is not sure how far he has succeeded.
His earlier stories sprang directly from his experience of the various shades of love and raw eroticism that he discovered among the rural poor, the industrial worker and the suburban labouring and lower middle class people in the midst of their quotidian struggles in poverty and squalor.
But his stories written against the background of the affluent life-style of the metropolis explore man-woman relationship from a different angle. While some reveal the complexities of such relatinshp and describe the strange and inexplicable forms it often takes, some other stories express an element of disgust mixed with irony when describing such odd sexual encounters in the urban context.
Although Samaresh has lefts behind a large corpus of fiction (more than 200 short stories, and a little over 100 novels), few of them have been translated into English. In the last few years particularly since his death, he has become the subject of a whole literature of research, criticism and appreciation in Bengali.
But there has hardly been any attempt to win for him a wider audience through translations in English. One hopes that the present collection, which brings together in translation a representative selection of his stories, will make good the deficiency.
Contents
Introduction
In Search of Myself
Adaab
The Confession
Mother of a Martyr
On Heat
Honour
How To Get Rid Of
Subasi
Livelihood
The Second Scene
Glossary