The Golden Gandhi Statue from America

The early stories of Subimal Misra took the Bengali literary world by storm upon their publication in the late 1960s. Distinct from the conventional modes of storytelling that preceded him, Misra’s pieces are more anti-stories 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 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 by a writer whom many consider to be a cult figure in Bengali literature resonate with truths that are undeniable even today, forty years after they were written.