Author: Bibhutibhusan Bandyopadhaya
Translator: Rani Ray
Publisher: Srishti
Year: 2002
Language: English
Pages: 158
ISBN/UPC (if available): 8187075872
Description
The stories included in this volume are some of the finest examples of story telling and reflect the range and multiplicity of author's interests and his preoccupation with a whole universe of human being working out their destinies amidst the circumstances in which they are placed.
Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhaya (1894-1950) the most important fiction writer in Bengali Literature after Rabindranath Tagore and Sarat Chandra, and remembered best for his Apu novels, wrote innumerable tales and short stories. The selection of stories in the present volume, introduced by the writer’s grandson, Tathagata Banerjee, are some of the finest examples of his story telling, chosen for their excellence as works of imagination rather than any theoretical interest.
The brilliance of Bibhutibhushan’s stories lies in the range and multiplicity of his interests; his preoccupation with a whole universe of human being working out their destinies amidst the circumstances in which they are placed; in the breadth of his sympathies which make even the ordinary, everyday life take on the feel of human experience; in the intimacy he invites among his reader, by his manner of telling, in sharing the author’s reflections and sentiments. For these and for the feeling of sheer wonder the stories evoke, Bibhutibhushan has remained one of the most well-known and best loved writer of our times.
The stories in this volume are in no way representative of Bibhutibushan. No selection or anthology can be representative of Bibhutibhushan, because there is too little that it 'typical' of him, and too much variety. However, there is a theme weaving in and out of most of these tales, discernible somewhere in plot and somewhere in character and lending them a semblance of unity, which, for lack of better expressions, can be called a theme of 'persistence' or 'recalcitrance' or 'incorrigibility'.
Contents
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Ancestral Homestead
The call
The Colour of Mist
The ‘Phoolbaree’ of Benigi
Bangle from Tirol
Nasumama and I
Fakir
Travelling Salesman Krishnalal