Sangeeta Bandyopadhyay: Selected Stories

A young woman named Riya plays an elaborate game of house with an unsuspecting man; middle-aged Ahana puts on a show of happiness and prosperity on Facebook for complete strangers; Anima, a woman living in an old age home, battles everyday indignities as she bickers with other residents about food, toilets and the caregivers’ attention.
One of the most daring voices in contemporary Bengali literature, Sangeeta Bandyopadhyay explores the raw tensions beneath the everyday life of middle-class Bengal in her writings. Foregrounding sexual autonomy and psychological realism, her stories are bold and visceral in their dissection of the institution of marriage and the search for self. Bandyopadhyay’s characters—women caught between convention and rebellion, men haunted by desire and guilt—move through Kolkata’s apartments and public spaces with startling honesty. Mocking and teasing modern patriarchy, her writing at once disturbs and liberates the reader.