Of Ghosts and Other Perils

Book Specification

Book Description

About the Book

Troilokyanath Mukhopadhyayas tales are excursions into fantasy and realms of the imagination, providing a strange and delightful amalgam of fact and the unreal. He belongs to the group of literary entertainers that includes Sukumar Ray, Edward Lear, Lewis Carroll and other luminaries who elevated Nonsense to an art form.

Of Ghosts and Other Perils brings together seven of the authors stories which have not been 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 Nayanchands 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 Chitra gupta 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)-e-produce more fun and dramatic turning points than the reader usually expects.

Troilokyanaths 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 pioneer of magic realist writing in Bangla.

About the Author

Troilokyanath Mukhopadhyay (1847-1919) was one of the foremost writers of fiction in nineteenth-century Bengal. An early proponent of the non-realist mode of writing, he was the prime mover of magic realism in Bengal according to some present-day writers. Kankabati, his debut novel, is considered a classic. His other novels include Damarucharit and Phokla Digambar, and he wrote numerous stories. Troilokyanath was also one of the trailblazers of independent, indigenous business entrepreneurship in India. He travelled widely in Europe, and wrote a travelogue in English called Visit to Europe which is a treasure-trove of information for postcolonial studies.

Arnab Bhattacharya is a translator and a critic based in Kolkata, and an author/editor of books. He has been reviewing books for The Telegraph for the last fifteen years, and has over 400 published reviews and articles and about fifty papers presented in national/international seminars to his credit. He is a member of the faculty of the post-graduate diploma course in translation studies at Rabindra Bharati University, Kolkata. Bhattacharyas publications cover diverse domains which include feminism, nationalism, films, and art and architecture, besides literature and translation studies.

Preface

I remember the time in my early teens when I first came upon Troilokyanaths novel Kankabati. It was almost like the discovery of an El Dorado. So many things happened there that I could have hardly imagined them unless I read it. I read through the novel almost in one sitting. Then I read some other writings of Troilokyanath, and felt that here was an author worth spending time with, an author who would ensure that you would never be bored with life. I noticed with astonishment that there was never a dull moment or a single dreary sentence in his writing. I felt at that tender age that this author was capable of constructing reality on his own terms, one that would run parallel to the one we inhabit, cocking a snook at it all the way through. I felt a keen urge to share my enjoyment with my friends and companions, which I did.

So many years have gone by since then. Late in 2011, suddenly I chanced upon a copy of Troilokyanaths