The Life of Sharatchandra Chattopadhyay Drifter and Dreamer

Sharatchandra Chatopadhyay has been the most popular writer of novels and short stories in his native Bengal and in India at large. Despite this, he remains unrecognized in the English speaking world. Narasingha P. Sil fills this void by presenting a historical critical assessment of his upbringing and the experiences that informed his work. The Life of Sharatchandra Chatopadhyay rescues the authentic man, a caste-conscious and patriarchal Brahmin of colonial Bengal, from the cuckoo land of praise and panegyric showered on the Aparajeya Kathasilpi, the invincible wordsmith. The author exposes Sharatchandra's innate conservative worldview and his romantic platonic concept of human sexuality that informs all his love stories. In many respects Sharatchandra resembles his formidable European forbear, Jean Jacques Rousseau of Enlightenment France. The concluding chapter of Sil's biographical study introduces this pioneering comparison between two men-a veritable tour de force.