Until now the large body of socially focused Bengali literature has remained little known to Western readers. This collection includes some of the finest examples of Bengali short stories--stories that reflect the turmoil of a changing society traditionally characterized by rigid hierarchical structures of privilege and class differentiation.

Written over a span of roughly ninety years from the early 1890s to the late 1970s, the twenty stories in this collection represent the work of five authors. Their characters, drawn from widely varying social groups, often find themselves caught up...

Originally published in 1956, A River Called Titash is among the most highly acclaimed novels in Bengali literature. A unique combination of folk poetry and ethnography, Adwaita Mallabarman's tale of a Malo fishing village at the turn of the century captures the songs, speech, rituals, and rhythms of a once self-sufficient community and culture swept away by natural catastrophe, modernization, and political conflict.

Both historical document and work of art, this lyrical novel provides an intimate view of a community of Hindu fishers and Muslim peasants, coexisting peacefully...

Set deep in the forests of Bengal, India, Mahuldiha Days is the moving story of a young woman coming of age in her personal and professional life. Anita Agnihotri paints a vivid picture in this novel of life in a rural Indian setting that is quickly vanishing.

Agnihotri's narrator retraces her childhood and early adulthood, and her intense, visual memories--including the neighborhood park that was her favorite refuge as a lonely child and the river in a tribal zone of hills and forests where she was posted for her first job as a civil servant--are recalled here in evocative...