Jibananda Das: Short Fiction

by Jibanananda Das, Gautam Chakravarty

Jibanananda Das was perhaps the most important Bengali poet after Tagore. However, the discovery of his unpublished manuscripts and their posthumous publication from the 1980s has gradually introduced a corpus of some eighty short stories and five novels that far exceeds in volume the original poetic canon, and has opened a new window on the literary career of Jibananda. This volume offers the first ever translation of Jibananandas early short stories, written between 1931-1933 but published only from the 1980s. Selected from the twelve volumes of Jibanananda Shamagra published so far, teh stories are a representative sample of Jibanandanda distinctive and compelling style and f his insistent concern with time, memory, loss, death, marital discord and unemployment.

256 pages, Paperback

Published January 1, 2009

About the author

Jibanananda Das (bn: জীবনানন্দ দাশ) is probably the most popular Bengali poet. He is considered one of the precursors who introduced modernist poetry to Bengali Literature, at a period when it was influenced by Rabindranath Tagore's Romantic poetry. During the later half of the twentieth century, Jibanananda Das emerged as the most popular poet of modern Bengali literature. Popularity apart, Jibanananda Das had distinguished himself as an extraordinary poet presenting a paradigm hitherto unknown. It is a fact that his unfamiliar poetic diction, choice of words and thematic preferences took time to reach the heart of the readers. Towards the later half of the twentieth century the poetry of Jibanananda has become the defining essence of modernism in twentieth century Bengali poetry.