Books

Manottama 

[Dukkhini Sati Charit] 

Narrative of a Sorrowful Wife 

[Anonymously written as ‘Hindukula Kamini Pranito’] 

[Written by a woman belonging to the Hindu lineage] 

Translated and edited by Somdatta Mandal 

With a Foreword by Rosinka Chaudhuri

New Delhi & Kolkata: Shambhabi: The Third Eye Reprint, April 2021.

 Published in 1868, Manottama is the first Bengali novel written by an unnamed Bengali woman identifying herself as ‘A Woman belonging to the Hindu Lineage’ which is technically not a pseudonym. Somehow evading the attention of literary historians, the text or any detailed information about it was unavailable for a long time till it was unearthed by a researcher in London only in 2010. The subject of this novel is interesting because it tells us about the pitfalls of female education in the nineteenth century, a period which also saw the emancipation of Bengali women through education in a significant way. Written in the traditional Indian Puranic style of narration, with plenty of sub-plots and digression and without conforming to the western dictates of unity of time, place and action, it provides a domestic picture where an educated wife has to compromise with the actions and worldview of an uneducated husband. A rudimentary attack on patriarchy, the slim novel needs greater attention now after more than a century of neglect. 

Review by Amiya P.Sen in Summerhill IIAS Review, Vol. XXVII, no.1, (Summer 2021).

Review by Vedamini Vikram Singh in Rhetorica Quarterly, Vo.2, no.1, Summer 2021.

Review by Shyamala Narayan in The Book Review, Vol. XLV, no.8, August 2021.

Review by Sabiha Huq in The Dhaka Tribune, 17 August, 2021.

Review by Sanjukta Dasgupta in The Statesman, 9 Sept, 2021.

Review by Purabi Panwar in The Literary Voice No. 13.2, September 2021.

Review by Anuradha Ghosh in JSL (Journal of the School of Languages & Literature, Jawaharlal Nehru University) 2021 pp.150-153. 

Anando's Storybook of Animals and Birds

by Somdatta Mandal

               Bolpur: Birutjatiyo Sahitya Sammilani, December 2020

Written at the special request of a small six-year-old child, this is my first attempt to pen down a book for children. It incorporates stories of different birds and animals along with personal pictures taken by the author and other family members in their various trips both within India and abroad. In a sense, it is also a travel narrative per se.

  Bollywood, Tollywood and Beyond: Literary Essays on Indian Films

Edited by Somdatta Mandal

 New Delhi: Pencraft International, 2021 

ISBN: 978-93-82178-34-7

The vast scope and range of studies in film adaptation are overwhelming. Cinematic representation opens up hidden layers of meaning and appeals to the common man much easier because of its visual content. This book contains eighteen essays and should interest any reader who wants to know about various facets of Indian films, ranging from discussions of certain recurrent themes and works by reputed directors to adaptations of works by renowned litterateurs.  Topics like ‘othering’ of the Muslims and the Anglo-Indians, LGBTQ issues, barrenness vs. motherhood, ideas of the gaze, and sexuality that are significant in Indian cinema as a whole, have been analyzed. The study also includes four essays on the celluloid representations of the Partition of India, namely feature films as well as documentaries on the Partition of Bengal, films on the Punjab Partition and those on border-crossing and survival. Three essays on Rabindranath Tagore, and films made by P. C. Barua, Bimal Roy, Satyajit Ray, Rituparno Ghosh, and others are the remaining areas that this book dwells upon.

Review by Kaushik Mondal in The Literary Voice,  March 2022.

Review by Vivek Sachdeva in ASIATIC, Vol. 16, no. 1, June 2022.

Review by Shoma A. Chatterji in countercurrents. org.  30.05.2022

and The Hindusthan Times, 8th January, 2023.   

   The Last Days of Rabindranath Tagore in Memoirs

Translated and Edited by Somdatta Mandal

Foreword by Fakrul Alam

Bolpur: Birutjatiyo Sahitya Sammilani, 2021

    ISBN: 978-81-194 942610

 The years were 1940 - 1941. Rabindranath Tagore had celebrated his eightieth birthday and was intermittently sick during that period of time till his death on 7th of August, 1941 (22nd of Shravan, B.S). Apart from his granddaughter Nandita (aka Buri) and youngest daughter Meera Devi, five other women stayed close to the poet, served him and later wrote memoirs of their experiences with intimate details not found in his official biographies. These were Nirbaan (1942) by Pratima Devi, selections from Alapchari Rabindranath (1942) and Gurudev (1962) by Rani Chanda, sections from Mongpu-te Rabindranath (1943) and SwargerKachakachi (1981) by Maitreyi Devi, Baishe Shravan (1960) by Nirmalkumari (aka Rani) Mahalanobis, and selections from the writings of Amita Thakur.

 Translated from the original Bengali for the first time, these memoirs cover a period of approximately the last year of the poet’s life from the time he fell sick in Kalimpong till his death in Kolkata. When read side by side, they narrate the same story through subjective perspectives and help us to visualize the physical decline and end of the poet in vivid details narrated from different points of view. The essentially female gaze, colloquial tone, and details of domestic nitty-gritty written in different styles also enhance the appeal of the memoirs for the readers. In them, we find a different Rabindranath, not the world poet but a homely and domestic person who in his advanced age loved the company of these women who voluntarily looked after and served him. 

Review by Meenakshi Malhotra in borderless journal, 6 Aug, 2021.

Review by Ahmed Ahsanuzzaman in ASIATIC Vol.15, no.2, December 2021.

Review by Sanjukta Dasgupta in The Statesman,  31 March, 2022.

Review by Mohammad A. Quayum in The Book Review,  January 2023.

Indian Travel Narratives: New Perspectives

Edited by Somdatta Mandal

New Delhi: Pencraft International, 2021.

ISBN: 978-93-82178-33-0

Though Indians have been travelling for the last few centuries, documentation of their travels has been scarce and far between. Since the beginning of this century, books and articles on Indian travel writing has become quite conspicuous and the numbers are growing at quite a rapid pace. At present Indian Travel Writing in all its variety has also become an established genre of academic discipline encompassing history, sociology, anthropology, memoirs, adventure tales and many more areas.

This anthology on Indian travel writing contains twenty-three essays that try to cover several new aspects of this protean genre ranging from the eighteenth century to texts written just a few years ago. Divided into five sections, it cuts across boundaries of time and space and enables new interpretations to be made. The individual essays, contributed by reputed scholars in the area as well as young academics researching in this field, cover general overviews, pilgrimages, and different kinds of travel within the country and abroad. Special emphasis has been given to hitherto lesser-known travel narratives pertaining to the North East, and those written in bhasha literatures.

Review by Gopal Lahiri in MUSE INDIA, Issue 96 (Mar-Apr, 2021)

Review by Himadri Lahiri in Indialogs, Vol.8, 2021.

Review by G.J.V. Prasad in The Book Review Vol. 46.1 (Jan,2022).

'Kobi' & 'Rani'

   Memoirs & Correspondences of Nirmalkumari Mahalanobis & Rabindranath Tagore

Translated by Somdatta Mandal

with a Foreword by Dipesh Chakrabarty

                    Bolpur: Birutjatiyo Sahitya Sammilani, 2020.

ISBN: 978-81-94435280

The unique personal and loving relationship that Rabindranath Tagore shared with Prasantachandra Mahalanobis and his wife Nirmalkumari Mahalanobis (aka Rani) is a well-known fact for all Tagore enthusiasts. This anthology deals with the English translation of two travel memoirs penned by Nirmalkumari, namely Kobir Shonge Europey (With the Poet in Europe) which vividly narrates the seven-month-long trip to various countries of Europe in 1926, and Kobir Shongey Dakshinattey (With the Poet in the South) narrating the trip to South India and Ceylon (Sri Lanka) in 1928, both published a long time after the death of the Poet in 1941. It also includes the translation of Pathe O Pather Prante, a collection of sixty letters Rabindranath wrote to Rani by personally selecting from more than five hundred letters he had written to her, and which was published from Visva-Bharati in May/June 1938 under the `Patradhara’ series.

Three other articles on Rabindranath penned by Nirmalkumari have also been included in this volume. They are “Om Pita Nohosi,” “Tamaso Ma Jyotir-gomoyo” and an article for children published in the Autumn Festive Number of the magazine Anandamela in 1941. Read together, the colloquial style in which the memoirs are written confirms how Rani had become a part of Tagore’s household and managed to come in close proximity to the Poet. However trivial they might seem at times, these narratives give a fresh and intimate picture of the Poet which is lacking in his different official biographies. This translated volume therefore will not only add to Tagore scholarship but also throw fresh light on the relationship between ‘Kobi’ and ‘Rani’, names that they used affectionately to address each other.

Review by Sachidananda Mohanty in The Hindu, 19 Jan, 2021

Review by Ahmed Ahsanuzzaman, in The Dhaka Tribune, 18 March, 2021.

Review by Sanjukta Dasgupta, in The Statesman, 6 May, 2021.

Review by Saurav Dasthakur in ASIATIC,  June 2021.

Review by Malashri Lal in Gitanjali and Beyond, Issue.5, July 2021.

Review by Radha Chakraborty in The Book Review, XV, No.8, August 2021.

Review by Himadri Lahiri, the borderless journal, 15 Nov, 2021.

Review by Shyamashri Maji in IACLALS Journal

                                Vignettes of Life Once More

                                                 By Somdatta Mandal

                   Bolpur, Birutjatiyo Sahitya Sammiloni, August 2019.

                                      ISBN:978-81-939765-9-3

Vignettes of Life Once More offers a collection of personal stories through a wide range of space, time and locale. The author looks back at several unusual people she had met over the decades, reminiscences about trivial incidents that took place in her own life – sometimes funny, and at others, thought-provoking. In all the vignettes she focuses on human aspects of her encounters and hopes that at least some of the entries will uplift the mood of the readers who are bored with the humdrum existence of life. These stories will remind them of what they had done or could have done in their own lives, especially when truth is stranger than fiction.

 The Journey of a Bengali Woman to Japan and Other Essays

by Hariprabha Takeda

Translated by Somdatta Mandal 

with a Foreword by Michael Fisher

Kolkata: Jadavpur University Press, 2019. ISBN: 978-93-83660-47-6

Four years before Rabindranath Tagore went to Japan, a young woman sailed from Bengal over the feared kalapani seas to meet her Japanese husband's family. Hariprabha Mullick had married Oemon Takeda in Dhaka in the liberal milieu of the Brahmo Samaj in the early 1900s. Her sojourn among her Japanese in-laws gave her another family in a different language, one who could communicate with her only in the language of the heart. She wrote about her experiences of this interpersonal and cultural encounter and travelled to Japan at least two more times. During the Second World War, she served as the Bengali voice of Radio Tokyo at the request of Rashbehari Bose. 

Translated in this volume from the original Bengali, Hariprabha Takeda's writing provides an account of Japan a century ago, seen through the eyes of a naive, yet perceptive and altogether extraordinary young woman. Three essays by Hariprabha Takeda have also been translated for this volume, along with a wealth of other archival material about her life and times.

"By collecting and translating these several types of travel accounts by Hariprabha Takeda, Somdatta Mandal has accomplished a great service for both general readers and scholars. Her introduction and informative reference notes provide a valuable context for Hariprabha's life and these translated works."

                                      --- Michael H. Fisher, Robert S. Danforth Professor of History (Emeritus)

                                                                           Oberlin College, USA

Review by Fakrul Alam in The Daily Star, June 1, 2019.

Review by Himadri Lahiri in The Statesman, 8th Day, June 16, 2019.

Review by Pritha Kundu in Asiatic, Volume 14, June 2019.

Review by Swati Ganguly in Rupkatha Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies, 2019.

Review by Geeta Doctor in The Book Review Literary Trust, Volume 44, 2020

 The Persecuted 

or 

Dramatic Scenes Illustrative of Present State of Hindoo Society,  in Calcutta 

by Krishna Mohana Banerjea (1831).

Edited with an introduction by Somdatta Mandal.

Kolkata: Ebang Mushayera, 2018. ISBN 978-81-939770-1-9

A text more heard about than read, this autobiographical play was penned by an eighteen-year-old student of Hindu College, Kolkata way back in 1831 as a tirade against Hinduism and injustices prevailing within the conservative society of the time. As a member of the Young Bengal movement, largely influenced by H.L.V. Derozio, Krishna Mohana Banerjea published The Persecuted more as an ideologue than a piece for theatrical performance. Intending to bring out “the inconsistencies and the blackness of the influential members of the Hindoo community” this play is an attempt to present the conflict in the mind of a sensitive Bengali youth torn between orthodoxy and the new ideas ushered in by Western education.

Review by Sanjukta Dasgupta in The Statesman, 24th March 2019.

Review by Himadri Lahiri in Asiatic, Volume 14, June 2019.

    The Popularity of the Ramayana and the Mahabharata: A Comparative Analysis 

  by Sukumari Bhattacharji

Translated by Tanika Sarkar and Somdatta Mandal

Kolkata: Anustoop, 2018. ISBN: 978-93-82425-04-5

In this short but significant book, a comparative analysis has been made of the two Indian epics, The Ramayana and the Mahabharata. Although the Mahabharata is by far richer of the two, the popularity of the Ramayana is unrivalled in the Indian society. In this book, an attempt has been made to find an answer to this paradox. The author delves deep into the cultural history of India, discusses the various features of different kinds of epics, and finds out the reasons behind the superiority of the Mahabharata and the popularity of the Ramayana.

Who is the real hero of the Mahabharata? Why did the Ramayana gain immense popularity in Indian society? Where lies the reason for the unmanly attitude of Bhisma? Why do we not find in the Mahabharata a portrayal of the ideal domestic relationships in the same way as we do in the Ramayana? Why does the Mahabharata throw up difficult and complex questions about life, morality and human relationships? How should a man respond in times of moral dilemma? These are the questions dealt with in this book, where the erudite Sanskrit scholar tries to find out answers in a rational and scientific way. In order to understand the different facets of India's cultural heritage, this is a must-read book.

Crossing Many Seas 

by Chitrita Devi

Translated with an Introduction by Somdatta Mandal

with a Foreword by Jayati Gupta

Bolpur: Birutjatiyo Sahitya Sammilani, 2018.

This translation from Bengali of Ms. Chitrita Devi’s travelogue Onek Sagar Periye is a collection of seven different segments of her travel to the West. In April 1947 Chitrita, along with her husband and daughter, set sail for England.  The first two sections, titled ‘Prelude’ and ‘Towards Sunset’ narrates her trip and sea voyage to England and her visit to London. In the third section ‘English Village and English City’ we get descriptions of the English countryside and her stay at the city of Bristol. ‘Paris by Motor Car’ comprises of the fourth segment. Travelling in Helvetia/Switzerland follows next. ‘The International Writers Meet in Vienna’ where Chitrita goes to represent India as the Vice-chairperson of PEN, West Bengal is the content of the sixth travelogue. As the title suggests, the final section ‘The River Nile and the Pyramids’ is about her visit to Egypt. As a middle class Bengali lady her exposure and experiences in these foreign shores are interesting to read. Also throughout the narrative the female gaze of the traveller especially draws the reader’s attention.This travelogue will be of interest for all readers in general and for women’s studies scholars in particular.

"Contextualising Chitrita Devi's travel text within the framework of social and political developments in India, Bengal, Europe and England is likely to give it greater value. The translation of such informed texts that move beyond the ‘feminine’ aesthetics of descriptive interludes or philosophical musings reveal new ways of seeing." 

                 -- Jayati Gupta, Tagore National Fellow (2015-17), Ministry of Culture, Government of India

Review by Angshuman Kar in Sangbad Pratidin (Bengali)

Gleanings of the Road (Pather Sanchoy)

by Rabindranath Tagore

Translated with an introduction by Somdatta Mandal

New Delhi: Niyogi Books, 2018. ISBN: 978-93-86906-25-0

Travels formed an integral part of the personae and creative artist that was Rabindranath Tagore. During his travels to England and the USA (1912-13 and 1920) Tagore wrote essays for publication in various Bengali journals. In 1939, Tagore selected fourteen of these essays and an appendix containing seven letters he had written to some of the teachers in the Santiniketan ashram while he was on these trips, for publication as a volume. Tagore rewrote the original essays then using the colloquial instead of the formal language; he also revised the texts substantially. Later editions altered the number of essays, sometimes digressing from Tagore’s own selection, sometimes going back to Tagore’s original formal language. This volume contains all the twenty-two essays and seven letters published in different versions of the text.

The travelogues provide an insight into Tagore’s perception of the different facets of western life and the diverse philosophical issues that cross his mind as he journeys from one continent to another.

 Translated from Bengali for the first time, Pather Sanchoy would be of interest to all those who enjoy exploring unknown territories geographically and psychologically.

Reviews:

"Somdatta Mandal's translation of Rabindranath Tagore's Pather Sanchay captures the accessible language of chalit bhasha that Rabindranath himself adopted when he rewrote his travelogue for publication in 1939. This translation embodies the wanderlut of the poet, whose power of observation and deep interest in humanity beyond home, are captured in his description in his selected essays. It has the modernity of a vibrant mind and thus remains relevant, engaging and transporting."

                      -- Bashabi Fraser, Professor of English and Creative Writing & Director, Scottish Centre of    Tagore Studies (ScoTs), Edinburgh Napier University, Edinburgh, U.K. 

"Somdatta Mandal's very readable translations of Tagore's Pather Sanchoy collection of essays are very welcome. They will enable readers who have no access to the Bengali glimpses into Tagore's mind at a very important moment of literary history...the publication of the English Gitanjali. It will also reveal his views on travel and travel writing and confirm to other readers his considerable ability in the genre."                                     --Fakrul Alam, Professor of English, University of Dhaka and Co-Editor, The Essential Tagore (2011) Harvard University Press. 

"Somdatta has followed in Rabindranath's footsteps by translating much of his travel writing. This new volume is a welcome addition to the impressive body of her transltions and will afford hours of pleasant and intellectually enriching reading."  

                            -- Kaiser Haq, eminent poet, essayist and translator, Professor of English, University of Liberal Arts Bangladesh (ULAB), Dhaka.

Review by Kaiser Haq in Asiatic, Volume 12, June 2018.

Review by FPJ Bureau in Free Press Journal, August 5, 2018.

The Handbook of Reviews  

by Somdatta Mandal

This anthology contains more than a hundred book reviews (that have been published over the last two decades. Some of them had been commissioned for newspapers and meant for the average reader whereas others have been published in national and international journals and aimed at more erudite academic readership. The lengths of the reviews also vary. Some are pretty short whereas others run into the length of an essay. The subject matter of the books reviewed is also wide ranging, beginning from popular fiction to serious academic deliberations. Divided into eight different sections, it includes fiction, anthologies, memoirs, biographies, criticism, books on cinema, books on Tagore and other miscellaneous topics as well. Compiling all these reviews together in one volume under the different sub-topics has brought out the amazing diversity of the books reviewed. Inspiring the readers to read the texts remains also the secondary aim of this volume. 

Somdatta Mandal

Department of English & Other Modern European Languages

Visva-Bharati University, Santiniketan

December  2015

Download The Handbook of Reviews

A Bengali Lady in England  

by Krishnabhabini Das (1885)

Translated, Edited and Introduced by Somdatta Mandal 

with a Foreword by Michael Fisher.

Newcastle Upon Tyne, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2015.

(now also available in a paperback edition)

ISBN (10): 1-4438-7701-8 / ISBN (13): 978-1-4434-7701-5

This is a translation from Bengali to English of the first ever woman’s travel narrative written in the late nineteenth century when India was still under British imperial rule with Bengal as its capital. Krishnabhabini Das (1864-1919) was a middle-class Bengali lady who accompanied her husband on his second visit to England in 1882, where they lived for eight years. Krishnabhabini wrote her narrative in Bengali and the account was published in Calcutta in 1885 as England-e Bongomohila [A Bengali Lady in England ] This anonymous publication had the author’s name written simply as “A Bengali Lady”. It is not a travel narrative per se, as Das was also trying to educate fellow Indians about different aspects of British life, such as the English race and their nature, the English lady, English marriage and domestic life, religion and celebration, British labour, and trade. Though Hindu women did not observe the purdah as Muslim women did, they had, until then, remained largely invisible, confined within their homes and away from the public gaze. Their rightful place was within the domestic sphere and it was quite uncommon for a middle-class Indian woman to expose herself to the outside world or participate in activities and debates in the public domain. This self-ordained mission of educating people back home with the ground realities in England is what makes Krishnabhabini’s narrative unique. The narrative offers a brilliant picture of the colonial interface between England and India and shows how women travellers from India to Europe worked to shape feminized personae characterized by conventionality, conservatism and domesticity, even as they imitated a male-dominated tradition of travel and travel writing.

"With this current volume, Professor Somdatta Mandal has added to her already impressive body of books and other publications by making accessible for the first time to Anglophone readers this significant book by Srimati Krishnabhabini Das."

       -- Michael H. Fisher, Robert S. Danforth Professor of History, Oberlin College, USA 

Review by Sravasti Guha Thakurta in MUSE INDIA, Dec, 2015.

Review by Swati Ganguly in The Statesman, April 24, 2016 & ASIATIC, June, 2016.

Review by Jasbir Jain in The Book Review, Vol. XL, April, 2016.

Review by Meenakshi Malhotra in Borderless Journal, 14 Jan, 2022.

A Journal of Forty-Eight Hours of the Year 1945

by Kylas Chunder Dutt (Author),

 Edited and Introduced by Somdatta Mandal

Kolkata: Shambhobi, May 2014.

ISBN 978-93-83888-15-3

Reading a writer and locating him in his own times is not the only idea of delving into this narrative. Being aware of the aesthetic shifts that have taken place in Indian Writing in English from its beginning to its present avatar, it is necessary to go back and reassess the hidden layers of our past and therefore Kylas Chunder Dutt’s narrative needs to be studied more carefully now. Though it bears the significance as the first ever fictional narrative in English penned by an Indian writer, it was written at a time when this new genre of writing in English did not even have a commonly agreed nomenclature. Without any logical categorization and historiographical organization, it was labelled by scholars as ‘Indo-Anglian Literature,’ ‘Indo-English Literature’ and now as ‘Indian Writing in English.’ The only common factor is that it is entirely desi, and reading an Indian text written under the hegemony of British imperialism in the early nineteenth century now in the postcolonial ambience of the twenty-first century globalized India is indeed an interesting exercise.

Review by Himadri Lahiri in Asiatic 8.2 (December 2014)

Review by Sajal Kumar Bhattacharya in Muse-India Issue 59 (Jan-Feb 2015)

Indian Travel Narratives

by Somdatta Mandal (Editor) 

Jaipur & Delhi: Rawat Publications, 2010,  292 pages

ISBN: 81-31603555

Travel narratives are intimately linked with the construction of identity. Occupying the space between fact and fiction, they expose cultural fault lines and reveal the changing desires and anxieties of both the traveller and the reader. Although the travel writing has always attracted a wide readership, it has only recently won significant attention from scholars. This anthology brings out different kinds of travel narratives from India, written both in English and the Bhasha literatures. Divided into five sections, the essays in this anthology explore the ways in which travel writing has defined, reflected, or constructed Indian identity. They trace Indian journeys from the 18th century right up to the present times, creating Indian ‘selves’ and Indian landscapes through affirmation, exclusion, and negation of others. They also examine a wide range of issues such as ‘home’ to ‘self’ and the ‘other’, travels to the imperial West during the colonial period, visits to countries of the Far East, pilgrimages undertaken within the country, trips to the Himalayas, and also internal journeys. This anthology will be of interest to scholars of history, literature, culture studies, and also to the reader, who wishes to delve into the multifarious depths of Indian travel writing."

Review by Sachidananda Mohanty in The Book Review XXXIV No.7 (July 2010)

Wanderlust: Travels of the Tagore Family

by Somdatta Mandal (Translator and Editor)

Kolkata: Visva-Bharati Publishing Department, October 2014, Rs. 450.00. 

ISBN: 978-81-7522-594-7

The Tagore family, with over three hundred years of history, has been one of the leading families of Kolkata and is regarded as a key influence during the Bengal Renaissance in the nineteenth century. They were the most splendid, free-spirited and venturesome of the great Calcutta families and consisted of members who were itinerant travellers. They had wanderlust ingrained in them and travelled to different parts of India and outside it for various reasons. On several occasions they recorded their travel experiences in diaries or memoirs; on other occasions nothing was written down or published. This anthology offers vignettes of travel undertaken by nineteen male and female members of the Tagore household beginning from Dwarkanath Tagore (1794 -1846) to Sumitendranath Tagore (1930 - 2006).

The places visited by these different individuals are often not that significant as are the purpose and experiences narrated in each of these pieces. Written in different narrative styles, they justify the protean form of travel writing per se. Taken as a whole these short pieces or vignettes offer ample insight into the lifestyles of one of the most illustrious and reputed households in Kolkata from the mid-nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century. Except for the entry on Dwarkanath Tagore (which has been collated from various sources because of the unavailability of original material), and the one by Rathindranath Tagore (which has been taken from his own narrative On the Edges of Time and written in English), all the other travel narratives, written in Bengali, have been translated for the first time by me. Also a brief bio-note of each of the contributing members of the Tagore family has been included before each entry in order to contextualize the pieces selected and translated.

Review by Bhaswati Chakravorty in The Telegraph, 13, Feb, 2015.

Review by Sanjukta Dasgupta in The Statesman, Kolkata 12th April, 2015.

Review by Usha Bande in ASIATIC, Vol.9 no.2, December 2015.

Review by Jasbir Jain in The Book Review, XL, No.4, April, 2016.

Review by Himadri Lahiri in INDIALOGS, Vol.4, 2017.

The Westward Traveller 

(Translated from the original Bengali Paschimjatriki)

by Durgabati Ghose 

Somdatta Mandal (Translator)

With a Foreword by Ashis Nandy

Hyderabad & New Delhi: Orient Blackswan, 2010

Price: ₹245.00, ISBN: 978-81-250-3991-4

In 1932, Durgabati Ghose, an upper middle-class Bengali woman accompanied her husband on a trip across Europe. The Westward Traveller (originally Paschimjatriki) is an enchanting written record of this four-month long sojourn. Filtered through her upper middle-class upbringing and perceptions, the narrative is observant—not only emphasising on a sense of place, space and landscape, but also an aesthetic, intrinsic appreciation of every destination. The writing comes alive in the author’s everyday interactions with ordinary people, be they fellow travellers or hotel owners or even beggars. Focussing on an accurate description of the ‘real world’, she is always concerned with verisimilitude.

An interesting fact about this travelogue is that even within its set pattern, it offers nuggets of history. What makes the account endearing is the various examples of intercultural encounters and wry comments, often arising from not knowing the language and making value judgments that can be cited at random. As Ashis Nandy says in his Foreword to this translated work, "the way Durgabati recounts her adventures in Europe makes them variations on familiar Bengali domesticity, interpersonal patterns and femininity played outside their natural locale. This gives the travelogue a stamp of predictability and at the same time, a touch of robust, irreverent charm and self-confidence."

To translate this depiction of Europe in colonial times through the eyes of a modernising Bengali woman has been a ‘labour of love’ for translator Somdatta Mandal. Simple and lucid in style, the work retains the traces of the times in which it was originally written and is faithful to the intention of the narrative. Coloured in the expanding consciousness of an individual woman, exploring previously unknown areas of the world, away from the home and hearth characterised by conventionality, conservatism and domesticity, this travel narrative will be a significant contribution to the history of women’s travel narratives from colonial Bengal.

Review by Fakrul Alam, Asiatic 4:2,  December 2010.

Review by Shabina Nishat Omar in The Book Review XXXIV no. 10 (October 2010)

Review by Jasbir Jain in Indian Literature (Sahitya Akademi Journal) (Vol. 263, May/June 2011)

Review by Sumit Ahlawat in The Tribune, Sunday October 10, 2010.

Review by Sudipta Chatterjee in The Statesman, Kolkata on 19 December 2010 & The Statesman, New Delhi, 6 Feb, 2011.

Film and Fiction: Word Into Image

by Somdatta Mandal 

Jaipur & Delhi: Rawat Publications, Jan 1, 2005, 346 pages

ISBN: 978-81-703-3917-5

Moving pictures in the silent era and moving pictures with recorded sounds after 1927, has been used to tell stories, describe events, imitate human actions, expose problems, and urge reforms. It is not therefore surprising that such uses would provoke speculative comparisons with other major human systems for telling, describing, imitating, exposing and urging - verbal language. The twenty-two essays in this volume deal primarily with the interrelation of the two art forms - fiction and film. An entirely twentieth century phenomenon, this interrelation not only developed a cinematic imagination in novelists, but also added new dimensions to the modernist worldview. Divided under four categories, the essays discuss film and literary narrative theories, analyse different Hollywood genres, speak of individual associations of writers with the `liveliest art of the century” and also delve into the problems of adapting of individual texts.

  CONTENTS 

I: THEORIES

1.      The Cinematic Novel

2.      Drama/Theatre/Film: The Dynamics of Exchange

3.      Word Into Image: Whose Text is it anyway?

II: GENRES

1.      Hollywood, the American Dream & Social Reality

2..      “The Wild West”: Fact and Fiction, Mythand Reality

3.      ‘Framing Blackness’: The Afro-American Image in Films

4.      ‘Of Soups, Salads, Chutneys and Masalas’:The Asian American Film Experience

5.      ‘Is Charlie Chan Really Dead?’: TheEvolution of Asian American Character and Images in American mainstream Media

6.      “Walking in a Sari and Combat Boots”: South Asian Diasporic Cinema

III: ASSOCIATIONS

1.      Reinterpreting the Bard on the Screen

2.      George Bernard Shaw and Film

3.      Eugene O’Neill and Film

4.      William Faulkner & the Silent Film

5.      “I Don’t Know Buffalo Bill”: Ernest Hemingway and the Western Film

6.      “Take the Money and Run”: Ernest Hemingway and Hollywood

7.      F. Scott Fitzgerald and “The Californian Cosmology of Talent”

8.      The Screenplay as Literature: A Case Study of Harold Pinter

IV: TEXTS

1.      Michael Ondaatje’s The English Patient as Fiction and Film

2.      From Conrad to Coppola: Darkness then and Apocalypse Now

3.      Steinbeck’s East of Eden as Fiction and Film

4.      The Old Man and the Sea: Using the film version to teach the text

5.      The Color Purple: Alice Walker vs. Steven Spielberg

6.      Hemingway, To Have and Have Not and Hollywood

7.      Of Screenplays and Plays: Tennessee Williams’s A Streetcar Named Desire

8.      The Curious Case of The Alien:  Satyajit Ray vs. Steven Spielberg

The Ernest Hemingway Companion

by Somdatta Mandal (Editor)

Kolkata: Sarat Book Distributors, 2002.

ISBN: 10-8187169176 / ISBN : 13-978-8187169178

This collection of critical essays is a tribute to Ernest Hemingway who changed the face of American fiction and became a widely recognized public figure. The 18 contributors have all delved deep into the various facets of the writer's literary oeuvre. This range from general assessments of his famous - and often parodied - prose style, comparative studies with other texts and writers, studies of his manuscripts and posthumous publications, film adaptations of his novels, new interpretations of individuals fiction, and a bibliographical overview on the Indian critical reception of the writer.

Asian-American Writing: The Diasporic Imagination 

(in Three Volumes)

by Somdatta Mandal (Editor)

New Delhi: Prestige Books, 2000.

ISBN-13: 978-81-755-1096-8/ ISBN: 817551096X

Asian American literature reflects the Asian experience in the United States right from the beginning of Chinese immigration in the mid-nineteenth century to the present. As both social document and mirror of memory,myth, dreams and desires, Asian American literature provides unique access to understanding the social history and sensibilities of this emerging minority group. This anthology in three volumes tries to break new ground by emphasizing upon the Asian American experience in all possible genres — interviews,creative writing, criticism, mass media. Writers of the Indian diaspora —Bharati Mukherjee,Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, Meena Alexander and Jhumpa Lahiri are widely discussed.

Reflections, Refractions and Rejections: Three American Writers and the Celluloid World

by Somdatta Mandal  

Leeds: Wisdom House Publications Ltd, May 1, 2002.

ISBN-10: 184290048X/ ISBN-13: 978-18-429-0048-2

This book intensely explores the interaction of film and fiction, both thematic and stylistic, by focusing on the work of three major American fiction writers whose involvement with the film world, Hollywood, script-writing and movie-making is too well documented to be dismissed as either incidental or accidental. The three writers, William Faulkner, Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald, are placed in the broader perspective of their time and place so that they also become exemplars of the general trend in the writing of the period. Thus the exploration goes beyond a discovery of stray visual resemblances between the scenic effects they create and the modus operandi of the cinema. These three contemporaries were writing in a period when the new art form of filmmaking, in all its gloss, was rapidly expanding its horizons, especially in America, and reaching out towards new techniques and innovations. Thus a subjective writer like William Faulkner, who through his impact on New Wave cinema had influenced film as profoundly as he had influenced modern literature; an objective one like Ernest Hemingway, and the prolific F. Scott Fitzgerald, each in his particular way, turn indubitably to the various stylistic methods found in film. Thus, in an age when the interdisciplinary study of the arts is encouraged, the film is used as an avenue of approach to elucidate, appreciate and evaluate the fiction-writers’ oeuvre. 

Bharati Mukherjee: Critical Perspectives

by Somdatta Mandal (Editor)

New Delhi: Pencraft International, 2010, 296 pages.

ISBN: 978-81-909-4165-5

Perhaps the only writer who features in anthologies of Asian American literature, Canadian multicultural literature, Indian women writers in English, postcolonial literature, writers of the Indian Diaspora, and in mainstream American writing ( her own choice), Bharati Mukherjee has come a long way in her writing career that spans over thirty-eight years.

This anthology of critical perspectives on Bharati Mukherjee focuses on different aspects of her oeuvre. These range from her position as an Asian American writer as much as an American writer, and revaluate the narratives of multiculturalism, expatriation and Bengaliness in her works. The volume carries critical studies of individual texts beginning from The Tiger’s Daughter (1971) to The Tree Bride (2004). Also included are articles on her non-fictional works like Days and Nights in Calcutta and The Sorrow and the Terror: The Haunting Legacy of the Air India Tragedy and her first interview given in 1973 in Bengali.

Journeys: Indian Travel Writing  

by Somdatta Mandal (Editor)

New Delhi: Creative Books, 2013.

ISBN-13: 978-81-804-3101-2 / ISBN: 8180431010

Travellers have always wanted to tell others at home about what they saw on their travels; and, right from the old travellers' tales of centuries ago, to contemporary reports of ‘embedded journalists’, we are always interested in hearing what it's like out there. But travel writing has only recently been getting the kind of academic attention it deserves. It is interesting to see how travel writers imagine the world to which they travel, and how their ways of seeing the world can tell us not only about that world but also about themselves. Also interesting is to see the strategies that are available to writers, and how they are used, in their efforts to describe or imagine the world that they are describing.

This anthology brings out many kinds of travel narratives from India, written both in English and the Bhasha literatures and ranging in time span from the sixteenth century to the present times. Divided into five sections, the twenty-one essays in this collection also explore the ways in which travel writing has defined, reflected and/or constructed Indian identity. Beginning with journeys undertaken within the country, some essays focus both on the home and the world, thus highlighting the wanderlust of Indians from different cross sections of society. Among the narratives describing foreign travel, we have trips to the Far East, the Middle-East and the Near West and because of the colonial encounter with Vilayet or Britain, different kinds of visits to England. The book will be of interest to scholars and readers across disciplines and also suitably illustrate the protean form of travel writing as a genre.

Review by Fakrul Alam in Asiatic 8.2 (December 2014)

The Indian ImagiNation: Colonial & Postcolonial Literature and Culture

by Somdatta Mandal (Editor)

New Delhi: Creative Books, 2007.

The IACLALS (Indian Association for Commonwealth Literature and Language Studies) held its 2006 annual conference at Visva-Bharati, Santiniketen. The theme of the conference was "The Nation and the Postcolonial: Indian Perspectives." While the Indian nationalist movement played a major and inspirational role in the worldwide struggle for freedom from colonial rule, the "derivative discourse' of nationalism had begun to be interrogated by a universalist such as Rabindranath Tagore as early as 1917. At this conference participants explored representations of the nation in both colonial and postcolonial times, in India and other Commonwealth countries as well as in the West, as a force for both good and evil, and in the context of alternative international, multinational and global formations. This anthology, the first of its kind in the history of the association,  is a selection of serious and engrossing research papers presented in this conference. The contributors include scholars like Supriya Chaudhuri, Saurabh Bhattacharyya, Debashish Lahiri, Himadri Lahiri, Saurav Dasthakur, Angshuman Kar, T.Ravichandran, Sandipan Roy, Basudev Chakraborti, Suparna Bhattacharya, Nishi Pulugurtha, Sipra Mukherjee, Sharmila Majumdar, Rakhi Ghosh, Subhendu Mund, Poonam Trivedi, Paromita Chakravarti & Swati Ganguly, Amrit Sen, Vishnupriya Sengupta, and Indranath Chattopadhyay.

Special issue on Rabindranath Tagore

by Somdatta Mandal  and Sukla Basu (Sen) (Editors)

apperception (Journal of the Department of English and other Modern European Languages, Visva Bharati), volume VII, July 2014

The thrust area of a UGC Special Assistance Programme (Phase I) from 2009-2013 at Department of English & Other Modern European Languages, Visva-Bharati, Santiniketan was "Rabindranath Tagore: East-West Encounters." This peer-reviewed volume presents research papers by faculty members and research scholars of the department and also the special lectures delivered by eminent national and international scholars who visited the department and delivered lectures on Tagore during this period. The articles represent the multi-faceted genius that Tagore was and cover topics as his music, poetry, fiction, non-fiction and also translation of some of his lesser known essays. A special book review section at the end also keeps the reader informed of all the new books on Tagore that have been published in the last few years.

Ethnic Literature of America : Diaspora and Intercultural Studies

by Somdatta Mandal and Himadri Lahiri (Editors)

New Delhi: Prestige Books, 2005

ISBN 10: 81-7551-163-X / ISBN 13: 978-81-755-1163-7

This  volume is devoted to diasporic writing in America and intercultural issues in contemporary ethnic literatures of the United States. In the present-day multicultural world, the issue of identifying an individual's space becomes a topic of significant concern, particularly for an immigrant writer who is already burdened with issues of immigration, acculturation and idenitity politics. This anthology brings together selected papers from the 2003 MELUS-India National Conference on "South Asians in the United States: The Diasporic Experience" and the 2004 International Conference on "Scene, Space, Scenario: Contexts of Multi-Ethnic Literatures in the Americas." The essays deal with wide range of themes—Theoretical Paradigms, Indian American, Chinese American, African American Voices and Intercultural Studies, the Performing Arts, and so on. The volume purports to make a rich contribution to the areas of Asian American tudies, ethnic studies, immigrant literature and comparative studies. The contributors are Mohan Ramanan, Jasbir Jain, Manju Jaidka, Sukalpa Bhattacharjee, Himadri Lahiri, Gulshan Rai Kataria, Gonul Pultar, Jap preet Kaur Bhangu, Mina Surjeet Singh, Punam Gupta, R.G.Kulkarni, E.Nageswara Rao, Nila Das, Anil Raina, Anu Celly, Ila Rathor, Alka Saxena, Eami Mathew, Mukul Sengupta, I.H. Shihan, Indrani Datta Chaudhuri, Pratibha Nagpal, K.B.Razdan, S.S,Kumar, Deepsikha Kotwal, Shukla Saha, Somdatta Mandal and Manpreet Kaur Kang. 

Margaret Atwood: Critical Perspectives

by Somdatta Mandal (Editor)

New Delhi: Pencraft International, March 2014. 

ISBN 978-93-82178-06-04

Margaret Atwood is Canada's most eminent novelist and poet, and also writes short stories, critical studies, screenplays, radio scripts and books for children, her works having been translated into over thirty languages. Apart from Atwood the writer, there is also Atwood the media star and public performer, cultural critic, environmentalist and human rights spokeswoman, social and political satirist, and mythmaker. As a popular writer who stated that she wrote “for people who like to read books,” she is taught all over the world in courses ranging from English literature, Canadian and postcolonial literature, American literature (in the United States, where Atwood is a ‘North American’ or sometimes an ‘American’ writer), as well as women’s studies, gender studies and science fiction courses. The fifteen essays in this volume written by scholars from Canada, United States and India revluate the work of this multifaceted writer. They offer discerning studies of several of the relatively more significant specimens of different genres of her work, and interrogate the features that tend to lend evocative richness and complexity to her creative oeuvre. Concluding with a complete bibliography of Atwood's published work, the volume makes for a fresh and exciting reading of this (probably?) most widely read and translated Canadian writer.

Bharatiya Engraji Kobita 

(Translation of Indian English Poetry to Bangla)

by Somdatta Mandal and Soma Mukhopadhyay (Editors)

Kolkata: Abhijan Publishers, February 2013

ISBN: 978-93-80197-07-4

Indian English poetry was born in the middle of the nineteenth century. This anthology contains translation done by several scholars of selected poems of fifty Indian English poets beginning  from Henry Louis Vivian Derozio to a contemporary young poet Meena Kandasamy. It also contains a preface by Udaya Narayana Singh, and two articles on translation by Subodh Sarkar and Angshuman Kar. The poets translated are H.L.V Derozio, Kashiprasad Ghose, Michael Madhusudan Dutt, Toru Dutt, Manmohan Ghose, Sri Aurobindo, Sarojini Naidu, Harindranath Chattopadhyay, Nissim Ezekiel, M.K.Naik, Jayanta Mahapatra, A.K. Ramanujan, P.Lal, Arun Kolatkar, R. Parthasarathy, Kamala Das, Ruskin Bond, Keki N. Daruwalla, Dom Moraes, Dilip Chitre, Eunice de Souza, Adil Jussawalla, Suniti Namjoshi, Gauri Deshpande, Gieve Patel, Saleem Peeradina, Temsula Ao, Hoshang Merchant, Agha Shahid Ali, Lakshmi Kannan, Pritish Nandy, Meena Alexander, Vikram Seth, Sanjukta Dasgupta, Niranjan Mohanty, Bashabi Fraser, Sujata Bhatt, Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, Mamang Dai, Sharmila Roy, Amit Chaudhuri, Amitava Kumar, Sudeep Sen, Moni Rao, Arundhathi Subramaniam, Ranjit Hoskote, Madhuchhanda Karmakar, Abhay Kumar, Ankur Betagiri and Meena Kandasamy. 

Literature in Times of Violence

by Somdatta Mandal & Gulshan Rai Kataria (Editors)

New Delhi: Prestige Books, 2009. ISBN: 81-7851-047-2

These are times of upheaval when one is assaulted physically, emotionally and psychologically from all quarters. Despite the trauma, however, one survives and carries on in the best way possible. How literature resorts to the turbulence of our time and how the reader responds to the understanding of such circumstances was the theme of the 2007 MELUS-India and MELOW Conference.

This volume brings together selected scholarly papers from this International Conference. Divided into three sections, Background and Theory, American Perspectives, and World Perspectives, scholars from India and around the world address the theme of violence as reflected in different literary genres. Focusing on American literature and literatures of the world over the last fifty years, the questions addressed were multifarious. How does literature respond to the legacy of mass violence and political conflict? Does the creative mind buckle under the pressures or does it rise aboe them all to create mournful music? And how does thereader respond to the various tensions that go into the making of great literature? What models are available for understanding these literary responses to the turbulence of the times? Do poetry, fiction, drama, and film help us find words and images to understand national and international catastrophes? Can literature narrate mass violence? Does it try to escape violence? Can it be a substitute for violence? Is it a cure or a Panacea? Or the symptom of a deeper malaise? All these themes are addressed by the contributors to this volume which include Emory Eliott, A.Didem Uslu, Debashish Lahiri, Mukehs K. Williams, Susan Rose, Sharon O'Brien, Somdatta Mandal, Nila Das, Kamaluddin Ahmed, Seema Murugan, Ashu Vashisht, Sumana Chakraborty, Afia Arafat, Kulbhusan Razdan, Srirupa Chatterjee, Nandini Bhadra, Alan Johnson, Roshan Lal Sharma, Cecile Leonard, Namrata Nistandra, Abdul Rehman, Mashoor Abdul Mohammed, Hossein Sabouri, and Priyanka Gandotra.

Banga-bibhag: Samajik, Sangskritik O Rajnaitik Protifalan (The Partition of Bengal: Cultural and Socio-Political Reflections)

by Somdatta Mandal & Sukla Hazra (Editors). 

Kolkata: Pustak Bipani, 2002.

The Partiton of Bengal in 1947 is a subject that can be approached from various perspectives -- literary, historical, sociological, geographical and cultural. This anthology is a collection of proceedings of a UGC sponsored seminar held in 2001 at Vivekananda College, Madhyamgram, under the University of Calcutta. The research papers presented by renowned academicians in the field of partition studies add new dimensions and interpretations to this engrossing area of studies. The contributors include Ashis Bandyopadhyay, Sudin Chattopadhyay, Saral Deb, Ashok Kumar Mukhopadhyay, Pabitra Gupta, Dikshit Gupta, Biplab Mukhopadhyay, Jibendu Ray, Anuradha Ray, Anowar Hossain, Meghna Guhathakurta, Subhas Krishna Thakur, Sunil Munshi, Kalyan Rudra, Sukla Hazra, Sandip Bandyopadhyay, Chandramalli Sengupta, Bhagirath Mishra, Sudeshna Chakraborty, Dipendu Chakravarti, and Somdatta Mandal.

Cross-Cultural Transactions in Multi-Ethnic Literatures of the United States

by Somdatta Mandal,  Manju Jaidka, Anil Raina & Vijay Sharma (Editors).

 New Delhi: Prestige Books, 2002

ISBN :81-7551-124-9

The collection of essays in this volume is a selection of the papers presented at the MELUS Conference held in 2001. The authors discussed include Toni Morrison,Richard Wright, Rudolfo Anaya, Bernard Malamud, Amy Tan, D’Arcy McNickle, Sherman Alexei, Maxine Hong Kingston, Claude Mckay. The anthology has essays on Afro-American, Native American, and Asian American literature.

William Faulkner: A Centennial Tribute

by Somdatta Mandal (Editor)

New Delhi: Prestige Books, 1999.

ISBN: 81-7551-056-0

William Faulkner (1897-1962) is one of the foremost twentieth century American novelists. His novels The Sound and the Fury, Absalom, Absalom! and As I Lay Dying are regarded as modern classics. This wide-ranging anthology offers a critical appraisal of Faulkner as a novelist on the 100th anniversary of his birth. The contributors to the volume comprise both national and international Faulkner scholars whose articles reaffirm the fact that along with Ernest Hemingway and F.Scott Fitzgerald, William Faulkner is still one of the 'Triumverate' American novelists of the first half of the century. The contributors include Thadious M. Davis, Lothar Honnighaussen, Tutun Mukherjee, Ranu V. Vanikar, Laxmi Parasuram, M.Thomas Inge, I.R. Draxi, Ashis Sengupta, Rama Kundu, Manisha Mukhopadhyay, Neerja Jayal Chand, Amina Amin, John Lowe, P.G.Rama Rao, Richard C. Moreland, Judy Hen, Pramod K. Nayar, Isaac Sequeira, David Paul Ragan, Andrew Hook, Amitabha Sinha, Howard Wolf, Somdatta Mandal, Arnold and Marianne Jensen.

F. Scott Fitzgerald: A Centennial Tribute (2 Vols)

by Somdatta Mandal (Editor)

New Delhi: Prestige Books, 1997; London: Sangam Books, 1998.

ISBN: 81-7551-039-0

 F. Scott Fitzgerald is one of the most colourful, significant and cherished talents that brought American literature to world prominence. The very mention of his name brings to the average reader's mind a vision of the Roaring Twenties, the Boom, Broadway, the Riviera, Hollywood, wild parties, bootleg liquor, romance, and a tragic alcoholic decline. From the 1920 publication of his first novel This Side of Paradise to his premature death in 1940, Fitzgerald was never able to shake off the label 'Chronicler of the Jazz Age' which often placed his public image above his work.  

This two-volume anthology immensely adds to our knowledge of the multifaceted genius that F.Scott Fitzgerald was.Indeed the author did not receive the kind of serioous critical acclaim that he hoped for -- during his lifetime. The acceptance he cllaimed for came much later. The contributors to the volume comprise an august group of Fitzgerald scholars of international repute. Most of the essays in this collection besides being 'labour of love' also ensure Fitzgerald's secure place alogn with Ernest Hemingway and William Faulkner as one of the "Big Three" American authors of the first half of the twentieth century.