Author: Jyotirmoyee Devi
Publisher: Kali/Zubaan
Year: 1999
Language: English
Pages: 133
ISBN/UPC (if available): 8185107696
Description
This English translation of the Bengali original Epar Ganga, Opar Ganga this novel is a searing commentary on India's partition, and on history's erasure of women from its annals. .
Noakhali, 1946. In the wake of the first of the pre-Partition communal riots, a young Hindu girl is given shelter by her Muslim neighbors for several months. Her father has been killed, her mother drowns herself in the tank at the back of their house, her sister . . Who knows what happened to her sister?.
Young Sutara, is eventually re-united with her brothers in Calcutta, only to find herself spurned by them and by the taboos of orthodox Brahminism, by whose code she is forever 'polluted'..
Written in 1947, Jyotirmayee Devi's novel is a powerful denunciation of patriarchy's hypocritical obsession with women's sexual purity. Sutara's story is the Story of Woman or the Stree Parva that the author believes has never been written, because all history is recorded by men.
THE TRANSLATOR:.
Enakshi Chatterjee is a writer, translator and media critic. She has translated a wide range of Bengali novels, short stories and a book of poems. She has written over 30 books. Her book Paramanu Jignasa written jointly with her husband, Dr Santimay, won the 1974 Rabindra Puraskar from the Government of West Bengal.