Some of the world’s finest short fiction has originated (and continues to flow) from) the cities, villages, rivers, forests and plains of Bengal. This selection features twenty-one of the very best stories from the region.
Here, the reader will find one of Rabindranath Tagore’s most revered stories ‘The Kabuliwallah’ in a glinting new translation, memorable studies of ordinary people from Tarashankar and Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay, the iconic Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay’s wrenching study of Bengali society, ‘Mahesh’, as well as over a dozen other astounding stories by some of the greatest practitioners of the form—Buddhadeva Bose, Ashapurna Debi, Premendra Mitra, Satyajit Ray, Ritwik Ghatak, Mahasweta Devi, Sunil Gangopadhyay and Nabarun Bhattacharya, among others. These are stories of anger, loss, grief, disillusionment, magic, politics, trickery, humour and the darkness of mind and heart. They reimagine life in ways that make them unforgettable.
ARUNAVA SINHA translates classic, modern, and contemporary Bengali fiction and non fiction into English. Over forty of his translations have been published so far. He has selected and translated The Greatest Bengali Stories Ever Told and The Moving Shadow: Electrifying Bengali Pulp Fiction.
He has won the Crossword Translation Award for Sankar’s Chowringhee (2007) and Anita Agnihotri’s Seventeen (2001). He has also won the Muse India Award for his translation of When the Time is Right (2012). His translation of Chowringhee was shortlisted for The Independent Foreign Fiction Prize (2009). His translations have also been published in the UK, US, Europe, and Asia through further translation.
He grew up in Kolkata and lives in New Delhi.