The Penguin Book of Bengali Short Stories
A landmark new anthology of Bengali literature in English, including many previously untranslated stories
'A splendid guide to unmapped lands… [Sinha] is one of the best living translators at work bringing the Bengali classics into English… he writes with exceptional elegance and wit, and is astonishingly productive.' - The Spectator
The prose short story arrived in Bengal in the wake of British colonizers, and Bengali writers quickly made the form their own. By the twentieth century a profusion of literary magazines and journals meant they were being avidly read by millions.
Writers responded to this hunger for words with a ferocious energy which reflected the turmoil of their times: these stories covered land wars, famine, the caste…