Bait: Four Stories Contributor(s): Devi, Mahasweta (Author), Banerjee, Sumanta (Translator) |
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ISBN: 1906497494 ISBN-13: 9781906497491 Publisher: Seagull Books OUR PRICE: $15.30 Product Type: Hardcover Published: May 2010 |
Additional Information |
BISAC Categories: - Fiction | Political - Fiction | Short Stories (single Author) |
Dewey: FIC |
Series: What Was Communism? |
Physical Information: 0.9" H x 4.3" W x 7" (0.55 lbs) 175 pages |
Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
Publisher Description: Unlike most of Mahasweta Devi's works, which focus on Bengali tribes and the rural dispossessed, the four stories collected in Bait are located in the urban and suburban criminal underworld, and form an unusual segment of Devi's oeuvre. The first story, "Fisherman," is about a man who recovers the bodies of young boys from the village pond so that the police can pass them off as victims of drowning. "Knife," on the other hand, is a tongue-in-cheek account of the liminal cultural world of West Bengal, which borders Bangladesh. A young woman makes her own protest against an exploitative establishment as a result of abuse by a politician and his cohorts in "Body." An unemployed middle-class youth discovers himself after his first "test" killing in the dark story "Killer." This collection of fascinating and unsettling stories is anchored by an in-depth introductory essay by cultural historian Sumanta Banerjee who has firsthand familiarity with the settings and situations from his crime-reporting past. Banerjee contextualizes the stories within the development of the growing criminal underworld in Bengal today. |
Contributor Bio(s): Devi, Mahasweta: - Mahasweta Devi (1926-2016) was a writer and social activist. She was the author of numerous plays, essays, novels, and short stories.Banerjee, Sumanta: - Sumanta Banerjee is a cultural historian who specializes in research into popular culture, particularly of the colonial period. He is the author of many books, including The Parlour and the Streets Elite and Popular Culture in Nineteenth Century Calcutta and Dangerous Outcast The Prostitute in Nineteenth Century Bengal, both published by Seagull Books. |