Short stories
Domoruchorit
ডমরু-চরিত
Trailokyanath Mukhopadhyay · 1923
Synopsis
Damarudhar, a village storyteller, recounts with the utmost seriousness adventures that could never have happened: journeys to the ends of the world and the sky, quarrels with gods and demons, a man whose torso a quack doctor sews back onto the hindquarters of a cow. A cheeky boy, Keshta, torments him with nicknames. Beneath the implausibility, abuses of caste and class, demagoguery and the poverty of the countryside show through.
Context
The seven tales appeared in a journal from 1910 to 1917 and were collected in a volume only in 1923, four years after the author's death. They mix the tall tale, science, myth, politics and the absurd, and anticipate modern fantasy in Bengali. Arnab Bhattacharya translated part of them in Of Ghosts and Other Perils; Bodhisattva Chattopadhyay has prepared a complete annotated translation, The Epic of Damarudhar, announced by Seagull Books.
Who it is for
Seven stories that can be read separately, made to be told aloud. One must accept a narrator who lies and never admits it. No French translation.
Prizes and reception
Regarded as one of its author's most famous works, and as a landmark of humour and the fantastic in Bengali prose.
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