Zany Tales of Fantastic Beings, Magical Transformations and Supernatural Happenings

When the translator Sucheta Dasgupta calls the stories by Trailokyanath Mukhopadhyay ‘tales of magic realism’, she reinforces the critical attention on magic realism as a sub-genre of fiction in recent years. The stories often begin in a realistic setting, with the reader getting involved in normal human interactions with their own conflicts, trajectories and resolutions, if any. But that is not all there is. Fantastic beings, magical transformations and supernatural happenings do not just penetrate into the narrative; they get intertwined in a way that they cannot be distinguished from reality.