Niranjan Mondal's A Tale of High and Low Tides

Dalit Literature from Bangla
1. Auflage 2025
ISBN: 978-1-032-61646-9
Verlag: Routledge India

Buch, Englisch, 172 Seiten, Format (B × H): 161 mm x 240 mm, Gewicht: 432 g

Reihe: Voices from the Margins

Niranjan Mondal is one of the most prolific writers of Dalit literature in Bangla known for his immersive fictions that root themselves in the lives of people from the Sundarbans, the mangrove forest in east India. This volume of the translation of his novel, A Tale of High and Low Tides (Ujaan Bhatir Kathokata), along with critical essays and an interview of the author, introduces his work to a new readership.

Mondal’s writings highlight the unique lived experiences of the inhabitants of the Sundarbans and are meditative explorations of the links between caste and expression, nature and human life, and the ‘centre’ and the ‘margin’. This book creates a dialogue between the body of literature that is visible and that which is not, as well as between biography and literature. Mondal’s own views on contemporary life, society, and literature—both mainstream and marginalized—will help readers understand the relationship between literature and its social context. The volume creates an academic framework within which Mondal’s fiction can be read, appreciated and critically analysed.

Part of the Voices from the Margins series, this critical edition will be an important resource for students of literature, comparative literature, modern Indian literature, translation studies, minority studies, Dalit studies, and gender studies. It will also be of interest to those engaged in contemporary Indian/South Asian literary cultures, social sciences, history and sociology.

Zielgruppe

Academic, Postgraduate, and Undergraduate Advanced

Autoren/Hrsg.

Bhattacharya, Sucheta

Fachgebiete

• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Spezielle Soziologie Stadt- und Regionalsoziologie
• Interdisziplinäres Wissenschaften Wissenschaften Interdisziplinär Regionalwissenschaften, Regionalstudien
• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Vergleichende Literaturwissenschaft

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Introduction 1. A Tale of High and Low Tides 2. Historicizing Marginal Ecology: Roots and Narrative, the Dynamics of the Traditional Fishing Mechanism through the ‘Popular Prism’ of the Sundarbans 3. Village Gods and the Dance of Death in the Sundarbans 4. The Relentless Tide of History: Human Ecology in A Tale of High and Low Tides 5. Interview with Niranjan Mondal

Über Autor(innen)

Niranjan Mondal, the author of Ujaan Bhatir Kathokata, was born in the village Kochukhali, adjacent to the Sundarbans, in 1955. He used to work in a nationalized bank in India, but his passion has been literature. He has published several volumes of poetry including Ofuran Aranyaneel (1988) and Bishonno Canvas (2014). A collected volume of his short stories has been published with the title Badaboner Padaboli. He lives and breathes the history, nature, anthropology, and ecology of the Sundarbans.

Sucheta Bhattacharya the translator as well as editor of this volume is currently Professor in the Department of Comparative Literature at Jadavpur University, Kolkata, India. Her research interest includes mid-nineteenth century English and Bangla literature, with focus on the ‘marginalized’ authors and texts. She is also a keen translator and has contributed to several translation anthologies, both fiction and non-fiction. She is a co-editor of the series ‘Studies in Comparative Literature’ published by Jadavpur University Department of Comparative Literature and Orient-Blackswan. She is also currently editing a volume of translations of Bangla short stories focusing on Indo-Bangladesh border experiences as part of the same series, to be published in 2025.