Author: Subimal Misra
Translator(s)/ Editors(s): V Ramaswamy
Publisher: HarperCollins
Year: 2010
Language: English
Pages: 192
ISBN/UPC (if available): 9788172239329
Description
Two brothers become wagon breakers and hired goons in their quest for advancement in life. Rumours of a great big flood or the end of days or a rebellion of refugees in Calcutta fly through the country. Haran Majhi’s starved widow’s corpse floats down rivers and swamps and drains as the nation awaits eagerly the unveiling of the golden Gandhi statue from America.
This collection of fifteen early stories of Subimal Misra’s “ including Haran Majhi’s Widow’s Corpse or the Golden Gandhi Statue from America’s, which took the Bengali literary world by storm upon its publication in 1969s. “Showcases the work of a writer who is considered a cult figure in Bengali literature.
Distinct from the conventional modes of storytelling that preceded him, Misra’s pieces are more anti stories than stories, a montage of images that flow into each other and tell a tale with greater power and urgency than narrative fiction. Every story hits hard, gripping the reader with its intensity and an underlying fantastical horror that is firmly rooted in reality.
ABOUT THE TRANSLATOR:
V. Ramaswamy’s exceptional translation brings to the fore the contemporaneity of Misra’s work while retaining the verve and pungency of the original. Anti establishment and revolutionary, these stories by a writer whom many consider to be a cult figure in Bengali literature resonate with truths that are undeniable even today, forty years after they were written.