Mahasweta Devi

A brief, evocative memoir from one of India’s greatest writers. “Like a dazzling feather that has fluttered down from some unknown place... How long will the feather keep its colours, waiting? The ‘feather’ stands for memories of childhood. Memories don’t wait.” In Our Santiniketan, the late Mahasweta Devi, one of India’s most celebrated writers, vividly narrates her days as a...

A tense sociopolitical novel exploring power, violence, and morality in 1970s India. The Murderer’s Mother takes readers to the late 1970s in the Indian state of West Bengal, where the Communist Party–led Left Front has just been voted into power. It tells the story of Tapan, who has been installed as a gang leader by the most powerful man in...

Chotti Munda and His Arrow is a novel written in 1980 by prize-winning Indian writer Mahasweta Devi, translated and introduced by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak. It is remarkable for the way it touches on vital issues that, in subsequent decades, have grown into matters of urgent social concern. Written by one of India's foremost novelists and translated by an eminent cultural...

It's the mid-to-late 1800s and the British have banished Wajid Ali Shah, the nawab of Awadh in Lucknow, to Calcutta. To the sound of the soulful melody of the sarangi, the mercurial courtesan Laayl-e Aasman is playing a dangerous game of love, loyalty, deception, and betrayal. Bajrangi and Kundan, bound by their love for each other and for Laayl-e, struggle...