Of Ghosts and Other Perils
Troilokyanath Mukhopadhyay & Arnab Bhattacharya
Price
975
ISBN
9788125052340
Language
English
Pages
288
Format
Paperback
Dimensions
140 x 216 mm
Year of Publishing
2013
Territorial Rights
World
Imprint
Orient BlackSwan

Of Ghosts and Other Perils brings together seven of the author’s stories not translated before. ‘Lullu’ is a ‘civilised, modern’ ghost who steals a married woman from Delhi and hides her in a chamber below a lake, but Amir, her husband, with the help of a weaver-singer, an astrologer, an exorcist, and other ghosts rescues her by making Lullu an opium-addict. In ‘Nayanchand’s Business’ we find a tale of a bull under orders of his ex-owner about to wreak havoc as he makes Yama, the god of the netherworld, and his assistant Chitragupta run in panic to escape being gored. Some of the situations—as when the torso of a man is joined by a quack doctor to the rear portion of a cow after an accident (‘Another Story by Damarudhar’)—produce more fun and dramatic turning points than the reader usually expects.

Troilokyanath’s fiction also has elements of social criticism tinged with satire though with a light touch. And as the translator, Arnab Bhattacharya, points out in a scholarly Afterword, Troilokyanath has been called with some justification a magic realist, a pioneer in Bangla writing.

Troilokyanath Mukhopadhyay (1847–1919) was one of the foremost writers of fiction in nineteenth-century Bengal. According to some, he was an early proponent of the magic realist genre in Bengal.

Arnab Bhattacharya is a translator and a critic based in Kolkata, and an author/editor of books.

Preface

Translator’s Foreword

A Note on the Translation

Glossary of Non-English Words/Phrases

  1. Birbala       
  2. Lullu                                                                                
  3. Nayanchand’s Business                                                   
  4. The Pearl Necklace                                                          
  5. Smile on Madan Ghosh’s Face                                       
  6. A Story by Damarudhar                                                
  7. Another Story by Damarudhar

Afterword from the Translator

Book Review | Published in the Mint, New Delhi, 4 January 2024.