Rabindranath Tagore

Radha Chakravarty

A landmark in Bengali literature, Farewell Song has been described as Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore's masterpiece This celebrated work is Tagore's triumphant response to those who criticized his supremacy in Bengali literature. Interweaving original verse and beautiful yet playful prose, he writes of earthly love and, in doing so, creates timeless literature. In the book, Amit Ray—an Oxford-educated intellectual who aims to overthrow the old order of Indian literature—is on holiday in the Shillong hills when his car hits that of Labanya, a scholarly local governess. Unharmed, he immediately succumbs to her charms, and they embark on an erudite and passionate love affair, but their hilly idyll is threatened by ghosts from Amit's more sophisticated past. The only available edition of a rare comic work by a Nobel laureate, this book is being released to coincide with the 150th anniversary of Tagore's birth.

Farewell Song

Mahasweta Devi occupies a singular position in the history of modern Indian literature and world literature. This book engages with Devi’s works as a writer-activist who critically explored subaltern subjectivities, the limits of history and the harsh social realities of post-independence India. The volume showcases Devi’s oeuvre and versatility through samples of her writing – in translation from the original Bengali—including Jhansir Rani, Hajar Churashir Ma, and Bayen among others. It also looks at the use of language, symbolism, mythic elements and heteroglossia in Devi’s exploration of heterogeneous themes such as exploitation, violence, women’s subjectivities, depredation of the environment and failures of the nation state. The book analyses translations and adaptations of her work, debates surrounding her activism and politics and critical reception to give readers an overview of the writer’s life, influences, achievements and legacy. It highlights the multiple concerns in her writings and argues that the aesthetic aspects of Mahasweta Devi’s work form an essential part of her politics. Part of the ‘Writer in Context’ series, this book will be useful for scholars and researchers of Indian literature, Bengali literature, English literature, postcolonial studies, cultural studies, global south studies and translation studies.

Writer, Activist, Visionary

Mahasweta Devi

Sukrita Paul Kumar

Chandana Dutta

Mahasweta Devi occupies a singular position in the history of modern Indian literature and world literature. This book engages with Devi's works as a writer-activist who critically explored subaltern subjectivities, the limits of history and the harsh social realities of post-independence India. The volume showcases Devi's oeuvre and versatility through samples of her writing - in translation from the original Bengali--including Jhansir Rani, Hajar Churashir Ma, and Bayen among others. It also looks at the use of language, symbolism, mythic elements and heteroglossia in Devi's exploration of heterogeneous themes such as exploitation, violence, women's subjectivities, depredation of the environment and failures of the nation state. The book analyses translations and adaptations of her work, debates surrounding her activism and politics and critical reception to give readers an overview of the writer's life, influences, achievements and legacy. It highlights the multiple concerns in her writings and argues that the aesthetic aspects of Mahasweta Devi's work form an essential part of her politics. Part of the 'Writer in Context' series, this book will be useful for scholars and researchers of Indian literature, Bengali literature, English literature, postcolonial studies, cultural studies, global south studies and translation studies.

A Reader at the Department of English, Gargi College, University of Delhi, Radha Chakravarty is currently working on English translations of major Bengali writers such as RabindranathTagore, Mahasweta Devi, Sunil Gangopadhyay, Syed Shamsul Haq and Selina Hossain. Her doctoral dissertation is a cross-cultural study of contemporary women novelists including Doris Lessing, Anita Desai, Mahasweta Devi, Toni Morrison, Buchi Emecheta and Margaret Atwood. She has contributed essays and review articles to various journals and critical anthologies. Her other interests include travel and freelance writing.

Crossings, Stories from Bangladesh and India

This book attempts to deal with the problem of literary subjectivity in theory and practice. The works of six contemporary women writers — Doris Lessing, Anita Desai, Mahasweta Devi, Buchi Emecheta, Margaret Atwood and Toni Morrison — are discussed as potential ways of testing and expanding the theoretical debate. A brief history of subjectivity and subject formation is reviewed in the light of the works of thinkers such as Hobbes, Hume, Kant, Hegel, Marx, Nietzsche, Raymond Williams and Stephen Greenblatt, and the work of leading feminists is also seen contributing to the debate substantially.

Rethinking Subjectivity

Feminism and Contemporary Women Writers

A Century of Women's Stories from Bengal

Vermillion Clouds

Rabindranath Tagore is widely regarded as a poet-philosopher and educationist, but his novels remain a relatively underexplored aspect of his oeuvre. Focusing on gender and modernity as key features of his fiction, this book charts Tagore's evolution as a novelist from self-conscious psychologizing in Chokher Bali to an engagement with nationalism in Gora and Ghare Baire (The Home and the World); a portrayal of asceticism and desire in Chaturanga (Quartet); an analysis of marriage, sexuality and change in Bengali society in Yogayog (Relationships); an effervescent fusion of social satire and literary experimentation in Shesher Kabita (Farewell Song); and an intense, dramatic study of love, politics and terrorism in Char Adhyay (Four Chapters). This study demonstrates that Tagore’s writings cannot be readily assimilated within current theoretical frameworks, and urges us to rethink the conventional oppositions between tradition and modernity, masculinity and femininity, East and West, and local and global. Addressing a major gap in the field, the book reconstructs Tagore as a novelist of eminent stature, demonstrates the range and complexity of his creative genius, his contribution to literary history and the relevance of his reflections to our times. Enriched by insights into the biographical and socio-historical contexts of his novels, this book will be of special interest to researchers, teachers and students of comparative and world literature, history, postcolonial studies and gender studies, as also to Tagore enthusiasts.

Radha Chakravarty

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