Of Women, Outcastes, Peasants, and Rebels

A Selection of Bengali Short Stories

Kalpana Bardhan

• Publisher: University of California Press
• Year: 1990
• Print ISBN:
  9780520067141
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9780520909458
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literature General
• Index: Literature

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 in tumultuous political and social upheaval.The reader encounters Rabindranath Thakur's extraordinarily spirited and bold heroines; Manik Bandyopadhyay's peasants, laborers, fisherfolk, and outcastes; and Tarashankar Bandyopadhyay's rural underclass of snake-charmers, corpse-handlers, stick-wielders, potters, witches, and Vaishnava minstrels. Mahasweta Devi gives voice to the semi-landless tribals and untouchables effectively denied the rights guaranteed them by the Constitution; Hasan Azizul Huq depicts the plight of the impoverished of Bangladesh.

Table of contents

• Cover
• CONTENTS
• ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
• INTRODUCTION
• The Living and the Dead
• The Punishment
• The Girl in Between
• Haimanti
• Letter from a Wife
• The Witch
• Variation on "The Witch": An Excerpt
• The Unlucky Woman
• A Tale of These Days
• The Old Woman
• A Female Problem at a Low Level
• Paddy Seeds
• Dhowli
• The Funeral Wailer
• Strange Children
• The Witch-Hunt
• Giribala
• The Daughter and the Oleander
• In Search of Happiness
• Through Death and Life
• A Day in Bhushan's Life