The Golden Gandhi Statue from America (PAPERBACK)

Two brothers become wagon breakers and hired goons in their quest for advancement in life. Rumours of a great big flood or the end of days or a rebellion of refugees in Calcutta fly through the country. Haran Majhi’s starved widow’s corpse floats down rivers and swamps and drains as the nation awaits eagerly the unveiling of the golden Gandhi statue from America. This collection of fifteen early stories of Subimal Misra – including ‘Haran Majhi’s Widow’s Corpse or the Golden Gandhi Statue from America’, which took the Bengali literary world by storm upon its publication in 1969 – showcases the work of a writer who is considered a cult figure in Bengali literature. Distinct from the conventional modes of storytelling that preceded him, Misra’s pieces are more antistories than stories, a montage of images that flow into each other and tell a tale with greater power and urgency than narrative fiction. Every story hits hard, gripping the reader with its intensity and an underlying fantastical horror that is firmly rooted in reality.

V. Ramaswamy’s exceptional translation brings to the fore the contemporaneity of Misra’s work while retaining the verve and pungency of the original; anti-establishment and revolutionary, these stories resonate with truths that are undeniable even today, forty years after they were written.