An Enigma among Literary Giants

I was a schoolgirl when I met Michael Madhusudan Datta on the pages of my texts. It is more than half century later that I have came across this vibrant account of him by Delhi-based author, editor and attorney-at-law Nandan Dasgupta. The world has by this time transformed itself but Michael Madhusudan Datta, a maverick often maligned by contemporaries, remains an enigma. Even if his literary work has received due attention, there have not been many attempts to understand it in the sweep of his life and times. For the youth of today, especially those who have been growing up outside Bengal and certainly India, this is an important dimension. For, Michael Madhusudan Datta’s story is essentially a tale of two countries, two cultures, or ‘biculturalism’ as Dr Narayani Gupta has put it. The book opens with a Note on Reading this Book, Illustrations, Acknowledgements, Glossary of Names, Brief Outline of Datta’s Life, and his Literary Journey (p. ix-xlix), ending duly with an Appendix, Bibliography and Index (pp. 318-349).