Women’s education was an important subject in nineteenth century Bengal’s intellectual circles. Many early Bengali novels had an educated man marrying an uneducated woman, and then educating her. In Manottama, the plot is reversed—an educated girl marries an older, uneducated man…
Rajshekhar Bose (1880-1960) aka Parashuram is quite well-known to Bengali readers, and outside Bengal also, as the greatest Bengali humorist of the twentieth century. But his younger brother Girindrashekhar Bose’s name is not quite familiar to the Bengali readership, although it is very well known in the world…
A greedy landlord named Ramachandra Mangaraj, belonging to a coastal village in Odisha, sets out to defraud an innocent weaver couple of their fertile and good-sized parcel of land measuring six acres and thirty-two decimals. He weaves a crooked scheme for this purpose with the help…
Blossoms in the Graveyard by Jnanpeeth Awardee Birendra Kumar Bhattacharyya is set around the Bangladesh War of Liberation of 1971. While books in Assamese have dealt with the question of migration of people from across erstwhile East Bengal (before Partition) and East Pakistan…
You are not alone when you read the Mahabharata. You are in the shadows cast by millions who have heard or read the tale before you. The Mahabharata has evolved over centuries with both the tellers of the tale and the listeners enriching it. It has made the transition from oral telling to inscription…
Vishwas Patil is well known in Marathi for his historical novels viz. Panipat and Sambhaji, which bring alive some tragic chapters in Maratha history that still rankle in the Maharashtrian subconscious. Whereas Panipat narrates a tale of an agonizing defeat of the Marathas at the hands of Ahmadshah Abdali…