Way Home: Contemporary Bengali Short Fiction

A selection of fourteen classic short stories from Bengal

The Way Home brings together in one volume fourteen stories representing the very best of contemporary Bengali short fiction.

Showcasing some of Bengal’s finest writers at their creative best—Bibhuti Bhushan Bandopadhyay and Rajshekhar Basu, Sirshendu Mukhopadhyay and Ashapurna Devi—these stories deal with a myriad human themes that are at once individual and universal. From ‘The Brahmin’, Tarashankar Bandopadhyay’s treatise on greed, gluttony and tragic human experience, to ‘The Fugitive and the Stalkers’, Sunil Gangopadhyay’s trenchant tale of violence and retribution set in the days of the Naxal movement in Bengal; from Samaresh Basu’s harrowing look at poverty and its degrading effect in ‘The Crossing’ to Narendranath Mitra’s lyrical take on the impact of triple talaq on Muslim women in ‘Sap’, the collection evokes different lifestyles while reflecting problems and issues with which we can all identify.

Sensitively translated, the stories in The Way Home effortlessly convey the lyricism and imagery of the originals while providing a riveting insight into the works of acknowledged masters of the genre.