Red Oleanders


Rabindranath Tagore - 1926
    Entering a town where men are enslaved to mine gold, she makes them aware of their bondage and creates in them a desire to be free.Her symbol, the red oleander, can be variously interpreted as frailty or as the red badge of courage. But Nandini escapes being defined as just a symbol. The tremendous verve with which Tagore invests her, makes her a real living personality, and her death is actually a rebirth for the gold diggers. - from the back cover

Kapalakundala


Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay - 1866
    Kapalik want to sacrifice Kapalkundla to the goddess kali to get the magical power. But Kapalkundla escaped from his hands with marrying a young man Navkumar. Story goes in the family life of Vestal (sadhvi) Kapalkundla with navkumar and spoiled after entry of Kapalik and Navkumar previous wife Motibai. A classic Story By Bankim Chandra Chattopadhya

Padma Nadir Majhi


Lambert M. Surhone - 2010
    Padma Nadir Majhi ( Bengali:,English title: Boatman of the River Padma or The Padma Boatman ) (1993) is an award-winning Indian Bengali feature film directed by Goutom Ghosh from novel,the same name Manik Banerjees Padma Nadir Majhi.Hossian Miya (Utpal Dutta),Bengali Muslim, a trader who offers to take this community to with an idealistic vision: he wants to establish a little utopia on an island (Moynadeep) in the Padma delta . and offer them a better life there. It is apparent that Hossian Miya has a flourishing business there, because he has recently purchased a huge boat because of expanding business.

নিষ্কৃতি


Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay - 1917
    In Nishkriti (Deliverance), the strong-willed Shailaja, the youngest daughter-in-law in a joint family, is made an outcast as a result of a misunderstanding; much later, her elders realize their mistake, just in time to save the family from disintegration.

Pride and Prejudice


Beth Johnson - 1813
    He falls in love with Jane, the oldest Bennet girl. Everything goes well—for a while. Then the handsome bachelor’s proud best friend, Mr. Darcy, ruins everything.Elizabeth Bennet has never hated anyone as much as she hates Mr. Darcy. How could she ever forgive the man who has ruined her sister’s happiness? She knows everything she needs to know about him. He is proud, hateful, conceited, and horrid—and he wants to marry her.Elizabeth and Darcy’s memorable, witty battle of hearts and minds has made Pride and Prejudice a readers’ favorite for almost two hundred years.Readability Note: This Townsend Library Classic has been carefully edited for clarity and readability.Source: townsendpress.com

The Tale of Hansuli Turn


Tarashankar Bandyopadhyay - 1947
    Does it herald the apocalyptic departure of the gods or is there a more rational explanation? The Kahars, inhabitants of Hansuli Turn, belong to an untouchable "criminal tribe" soon to be epically transformed by the effects of World War II and India's independence movement. Their headman, Bonwari, upholds the ethics of an older time, but his fragile philosophy proves no match for the overpowering machines of war. As Bonwari and the village elders come to believe the gods have abandoned them, younger villagers led by the rebel Karali look for other meanings and a different way of life.As the two factions fight, codes of authority, religion, sex, and society begin to break down, and amid deadly conflict and natural disaster, Karali seizes his chance to change his people's future. Sympathetic to the desires of both older and younger generations, Tarashankar Bandyopadhyay depicts a difficult transition in which a marginal caste fragments and mutates under the pressure of local and global forces. The novel's handling of the language of this rural society sets it apart from other works of its time, while the village's struggles anticipate the dilemmas of rural development, ecological and economic exploitation, and dalit militancy that would occupy the center of India's post-Independence politics.Negotiating the colonial depredations of the 1939-45 war and the oppressions of an agrarian caste system, the Kahars both fear and desire the consequences of a revolutionized society and the loss of their culture within it. Lyrically rendered by one of India's great novelists, this story of one people's plight dramatizes the anxieties of a nation and the resistance of some to further marginalization.

Kalki: Selected Stories


Kalki - 1999
    His collection brings together the best of Kalki’s short stories, which contain some of his most colourful and enduring characters and themes of Tamil popular fiction of the nineteen thirties and forties. There is in these stories the heady urgency of the freedom struggle, the piquant humour of the parodied Tamil gothic and devastating social satire. In her sensitive translations, Gowri Ramnarayan has succeeded in capturing the nuances of the gently mordant wit that made Kalki’s stories the highlight of the magazines they were originally published in, creating for themselves a dedicated following that flourishes undiminished to this day.Coinciding with the centenary of Kalki’s birth, this volume is a well-deserved tribute to a writer whose breadth of vision and genius imagined and served a new India.

रावीपार


गुलज़ार - 1999
    The stories in this book have their roots in the Indian culture but express universal emotions that are experienced across the boundaries of regions, caste, and creed. Varied emotions of love, heartbreak, aloofness, anxiety, fear, and longing are expressed in this book.There is one story in which movie star Dilip Kumar breaks the heart of a young girl. There is another where a man pushes off another from a moving train. Raavi Paar also tells the story of a Muslim man whose wish is to be cremated after death and not be buried. There is also a story about a married woman who realises that the only reason for her husband to marry her was to use her as cheap labour.The title of this book is an incident from the author’s own life. During the India-Pakistan partition, the author was mistakenly claimed as their own child by another family. Raavi Paar consists of stories which will touch the reader’s hearts due to the simplicity and intricacy of emotions portrayed by the author.

আরণ্যক


Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay - 1939
    The protagonist Satyacharan has gone to an estate in Bhagalpur after getting a job of a manager. Initially his urban lifestyle might have revolted against the lonely jungle life but gradually nature hypnotized Satyacharan. Gradually he can not even resist a moment's absence from the forest. Satyacharan and his partner Jugalprasad, a perfect match to the nature-loving soul of Satyacharan decorated the forest by planting many rare species of herbs and saplings. But Satyacharan is an estate manager. He has to destroy this creation of the forest-Goddess against his own will and distribute it amongst the local people. Age old gigantic trees as well as plants and herbs of rare species are getting destroyed with the sharp axes. This results in a deep feeling of guilt and sadness at the end of the novel.

Jane Austen: Sense and Sensibility and Pride and Prejudice


Robert Clark - 1994
    The volume includes recent essays from Alastair Duckworth, Marilyn Butler, D.A. Miller, Isobel Armstrong and Karen Newman.

The Romance of a Busy Broker


O. Henry - 1906
    

Phatik Chand


Satyajit Ray - 1983
    The ready sympathy and even generosity of the poor is contrasted with the heartlessness and selfish calculativeness of the rich. A juggler called Harun takes care of him and when he finally regains his memory, Phatik is restored to his family by Harun. The relationship which develops between the boy and the juggler as the central theme of the novel is movingly sketched and delineated.

প্রথম প্রতিশ্রুতি


Ashapurna Devi - 1964
    Celebrated as one of the most popular and path-breaking novels of its time, it has received continual critical acclaim: the Rabindra Puraskar (the Tagore Prize) in 1966 and the Bharitiya Jnanpith, India’s highest literary award, in 1977. Spanning the late eighteenth and early twentieth centuries, Ashapurna tells the story of the struggles and efforts of women in nineteenth-century, colonial Bengal in a deceptively easy and conversational style. The charming eight-year old heroine, Satyabati is a child bride who leaves her husband’s village for Calcutta, the capital of British India where she is caught in the social dynamics of women’s education, social reform agendas, modern medicine and urban entertainment. As she makes her way through this complex maze, making sense of the rapidly changing world around her, Satyabati nurtures hopes and aspirations for her daughter. But the promises held out by modernity turn out to be empty, instigating Satyabati to break away from her inherited world and initiate a quest that takes her to the very heart of tradition.Indira Chowdhury’s confident translation, with its conscious choice of Indian English equivalents over British and American colloquialisms, carries across the language divide the flavour of Ashapurna’s unique idiomatic style. This edition also includes the translator’s reflections on the process of translation itself.

বরফ গলা নদী


Zahir Raihan - 1969
    Very poignantly written, this is arguably Zahir Raihan’s best novel and certainly one of the milestones of contemporary Bangla literature.

Gora


Rabindranath TagoreJanko Moder - 1910
    The story reflects the social, political and religious scene in Bengal at the turn of the century. The forces that were operating in Bengal at that time were one of the intense nationalism and revival of ancient spiritual values and also that of liberal western thought. What makes Gora a great prose epic is not only its social content but also its brilliant story of self-searching, of resolution, of conflicts and of self discovery.