Calcutta Nights

Hemendra Kumar Roy

yan 2020 · Niyogi Books

E-book

140

Pages

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À propos de cet e-book

Calcutta nights (Raater Kolkata) is the real-life story and memoir of the enigmatic ‘Meghnad Gupta’, pen name of famed Bengali fiction writer Hemendra Kumar Roy. Translated into English by Rajat Chaudhuri almost a century after the first publication of Raater Kolkata in 1923, Roy reveals to contemporary readers The darkest secrets of an earlier Calcutta. The first two decades of the last century, the backdrop for this book, were politically turbulent times. Those days, Calcutta, the erstwhile capital of British India, was teeming with people from different parts of the country besides Europeans and other foreigners. It was a city of sin, pleasure and suffering. Indians who arrived and settled here mingled with locals, some of them picking up dress, manners and the wanton lifestyles of the Bengali ‘Babu’, while others kept their identities intact. All this created a unique cosmopolitan setting, coloured with shades of debauchery, darkness and crime that this first-hand account brilliantly recounts. Written in an age very different from ours, certain views of the author could be jarring for the present times. However, these need to be tempered by the understanding of the sociopolitical contexts and the distance of a century separating us from Meghnad Gupta’s Calcutta. Calcutta nights is the hootum pyanchar naksha (published in 1862 and penned by kaliprasanna Sinha) of the early twentieth century, a book that will help anyone understand the contrasts and colours of a unique Indian metropolis.

À propos de l'auteur

Famous Bengali author Hemendra Kumar Roy was also known as the emperor of adventure stories. His contribution to 20th century Bengali literature covering adventure, detective, and supernatural plots inspired movie hits like Bees Saal Baad (Twenty Years Later) and Jawkher Dhan (The Treasure and its Ghost). He pioneered the Bengali science-fiction and detective story traditions. Roy’s characters Bimal-Kumar or Jayanta-Manik, the detective and assistant duo, are popular to this day. Born in Kolkata, Roy also published essays and was closely associated with a number of literary magazines. His love for adventure and the unknown left a distinct mark in his prose. Translator Bilingual author and editor Rajat Chaudhuri has published novels, story collections and other works. His books include The Butterfly Effect (Niyogi Books), Hotel Calcutta (Niyogi Books), The Best Asian Speculative Fiction edited by him among others. Chaudhuri has won the Charles Wallace Creative Writing Fellowship, UK, the Hawthornden Castle Fellowship, Scotland, the Korean Arts Council-InKo Residency, South Korea, and the Sangam House residency. He has written for Outlook magazine, American Book Review (University of Houston, USA), Asian Review of Books (Hong Kong), Anandabazar Patrika, Indian Literature (Sahitya Akademi), The Telegraph and other publications.

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