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BENGALI LITERATURE NEWS

Mahasweta Devi's fiction resists the smoothness of official history.

Why Mahasweta Devi still matters: 6 books to read on her 100th birth anniversary

January 28, 2026 5:46 pm

At 100, Mahasweta Devi does not read like a writer of the past, but as a rebuke to literary complacency and historical amnesia.

Bengal sang in metaphors, not memes: Why Anirban Bhattacharya’s Hooliganism missed the protest beat

September 11, 2025 9:26 pm

Bengal’s history of lyrical resistance clashes with Anirban Bhattacharya's crude mockery, trades Bengal’s rich protest tradition for viral gimmickry.

Uma Dasgupta in a still from the original Pather Panchali and covers of the novel by Bibhutibhushan Bandopadhyay.

What the silenced, suppressed angst of Durga in Pather Panchali tells us about girlhood

August 14, 2025 11:33 am

Durga of Pather Panchali: The forgotten girl who shaped Apu’s story and broke literary ground for Indian girlhood.

From Chandannagore to Bloomsbury: Virginia Woolf’s unexpected 'Bengali connection'

October 26, 2025 10:24 pm

As I see it: Reading Virginia Woolf as an Indian woman, I cannot help but wonder what if she had known about her supposed Bengali origins? Would it have altered her worldview?

Unpacking controversy over alleged demolition of Satyajit Ray’s ancestral home in Bangladesh

July 20, 2025 7:48 am

While it is unclear whether a house being demolished in Bangladesh’s Mymensingh once belonged to the Ray family, the recent controversy has deeper roots

Beyond Devdas and Srikant: 5 Bengali books where women take the lead

Beyond Devdas and Srikant: 5 Bengali books where women take lead

July 09, 2025 10:13 pm

Where love meets resistance- 5 unforgettable women-led Bengali classics.

Hooked on ‘ilish-ious’ hilsa: The fish that inspires Bengal’s art, culture, and poetry

May 22, 2025 3:39 pm

For many Bengali families, Durga Puja is incomplete without their beloved ilish (hilsa). Some even offer it to the Goddess, believing that without it, the puja would be incomplete.

A tribute to the anti-establishment Bengali writer Subimal Misra, who passed away recently

February 17, 2023 11:57 am

In form and content, Misra's work was unparalleled in how it challenged preconceptions and encouraged a deeper discursive understanding of issues.

Narayan Debnath’s comic world was rich, but stuck in stereotype and slapstick

January 24, 2022 9:38 am

🔴 He took to the genre of stilted, repetitive adolescent pranks in the capers of Handa and Bhoda, and repeated the same tricks and clichés when he created Nonte-Fonte