Imaginary Maps presents three stories from noted Bengali writer Mahasweta Devi in conjunction with readings of these tales by famed cultural and literary critic, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak. Weaving history, myth and current political realities, these stories explore troubling motifs in contemporary Indian life through the figures and narratives of indigenous tribes in India. At once delicate and violent, Devi's stories map the experiences of the "tribals" and tribal life under decolonization. In "The Hunt," "Douloti the Bountiful" and the deftly wrought allegory of tribal agony "Pterodactyl, Pirtha, and Puran Sahay," Ms. Devi links the specific fate of tribals in India to that of marginalized peoples everywhere. Gayatri Spivak's readings of these stories connect the necessary "power lines" within them, not only between local and international structures of power (patriarchy, nationalisms, late capitalism), but also to the university.

Imaginary Maps

Literature & Fiction

Devi, Mahasweta

History & Criticism

Routledge

<div>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 to keep their balance. Ranging across generations and geography, the scale of Laayl-e's story sweeps the devil, a crime lord, and many other remarkable characters into a heady mix. Mirror of the Darkest Night is almost an aberration in Mahasweta Devi's oeuvre. Known for her activism and hard-hitting indictment of social inequalities, she pays close attention to detail in this sparkling novel. It offers a rare glimpse of Devi's talent for telling the sort of story she normally eschewed--and it's a cracker of a tale.</div>

Mirror of the Darkest Night

Literary

Seagull Books

Product Description 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 Sanitikentan, the late Mahasweta Devi, one of India’s most celebrated writers, vividly narrates her days as a schoolgirl in the 1930s. As the aging author struggles to recapture vignettes of her childhood, these reminiscences bring to the written page not only her individual sensibility but an entire ethos. Santiniketan is home to the school and university founded by the foremost literary and cultural icon of India, Rabindranath Tagore. In these pages, a forgotten Santiniketan, seen through the innocent eyes of a young girl, comes to life—the place, its people, flora and fauna, along with its educational environment, culture of free creative expression, vision of harmonious coexistence between natural and human worlds, and the towering presence of Tagore himself. Alongside, we get a glimpse of the private Mahasweta—her inner life, family and associates, and the early experiences that shaped her personality. A nostalgic journey to a bygone era, harking back to its simple yet profound values—so distant today and so urgent yet again—Our Santiniketan is an invaluable addition to Devi’s rich oeuvre available in English translation. About the Author Mahasweta Devi (1926–2016) was a writer and social activist. She was the author of numerous novels, essays, and short stories.Radha Chakravarty is a writer, critic, and translator. Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. Why I was sent to Santiniketan was something I often wondered about, later on. Tutul had many connections there, of course. And Ma’s maternal cousin Amiya Chakravarti was the Poet’s secretary, at one time. Chhoto Mama was there as well. In one voice, everyone (from Ma’s side of the family) declared that a per-son with a transferable job must place his children somewhere, so they can receive an education. That ‘somewhere’ was Santiniketan. That the Santiniketan of those few years I spent there would come to occupy the place ‘closest to my heart’ in my memory, was something I didn’t realize at the age of ten. Right from those times, I was very partial to my mother. Hearing that I would have to leave her and go away, I became very tearful. When Ma went over to Baba’s side, I felt unbearably bitter and reproachful. The house from where I departed for Santiniketan was my maternal grandfather’s property in Dhaka, at 15 Zindabahar Lane, Armanitola. I left in 1936. Now I write this in December 2000. In sixty-four years, not only Dhaka-Kolkata-Faridpur-Rangpur, but even the Bahrampur I first saw in 1945 has really, really changed. But the old cities live on in secret, hiding here and there. That is something to rejoice about, a matter of great solace. When I went to Dhaka, I didn’t search for Tikatuli, Kayettuli, the field at Ramna, Picture Palace at Armanitola—all those places so glowingly etched in my memory. I was terribly afraid that I wouldn’t recognize any-thing, that everything had been utterly transformed. But Rashid Haider assured me: ‘Didi! Your grandfather’s house remains exactly as it was.’ This proved to be a dazzling reality. Somehow, the house has survived. Why has it survived? Because the house is now a police outpost. A full-fledged police station is a phanri, what they call a thana. Some thanas have a younger brother. That younger brother is known as the phanri, or outpost. What a priceless gift the city of Dhaka had given me! When I beheld the house, that was how I felt. It was like finding that proverbial single jewel, the fabled treasure of seven kings. Readers, if you happen to be youngsters of seventy or sixty or fifty, then you will have listened to or read fairy tales in your childhood. You know, of cour

Our Santiniketan (The India List)

Biographies & Memoirs

Arts & Literature

Chotti Munda and His Arrow

Written in 1980, this novel by prize-winning Indian writerMahasweta Devi, translated and introduced by Gayatri ChakravortySprivak, is remarkable for the way in which it touches on vitalissues that have in subsequent decades grown into matters of urgentsocial conern. Written by one of India’s foremost novelists, andtranslated by an eminent cultural and critical theorist.Ranges over decades in the life of Chotti – the centralcharacter – in which India moves from colonial rule toindependence, and then to the unrest of the 1970s.Traces the changes, some forced, some welcome, in the dailylives of a marginalized rural community.Raises questions about the place of the tribal on the map ofnational identity, land rights and human rights, the‘museumization’ of ‘ethnic’ cultures, andthe justifications of violent resistance as the last resort of adesperate people.Represents enlightening reading for students and scholars ofpostcolonial literature and postcolonial studies.

Contemporary

Wiley/Blackwell

Written in 1980, this novel by prize-winning Indian writer Mahasweta Devi, translated and introduced by Gayatri Chakravorty Sprivak, is remarkable for the way in which it touches on vital issues that have in subsequent decades grown into matters of urgent social conern.     Written by one of India’s foremost novelists, and translated by an eminent cultural and critical theorist.  Ranges over decades in the life of Chotti – the central character – in which India moves from colonial rule to independence, and then to the unrest of the 1970s.  Traces the changes, some forced, some welcome, in the daily lives of a marginalized rural community.  Raises questions about the place of the tribal on the map of national identity, land rights and human rights, the ‘museumization’ of ‘ethnic’ cultures, and the justifications of violent resistance as the last resort of a desperate people.  Represents enlightening reading for students and scholars of postcolonial literature and postcolonial studies.

Truth/Untruth (The India List)

A tense sociopolitical novel exploring power, violence, and morality in 1970s India. &nbsp; 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.&nbsp; It tells the story of Tapan, who has been installed as a gang leader by the most powerful man in the locality in order to kill "unwanted obstacles," which he does, one after another. Tapan knows there is no other way he can earn a living, but at the same time, he is desperate to protect his family. He tries to stop petty crime and assaults on women, even as he protects his patron's interests. Through the dissonance, he becomes both a feared and revered figure, but his patron's game becomes clear: now the murderer, too, must be eliminated.

The Murderer’s Mother (The India List)

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.

Bait: Four Stories (What Was Communism?)

Genre Fiction

Lakshmibai, the Queen of Jhansi, a legendary Indian heroine, led her troops against the British in the uprising of 1857, which is now widely described as the first Indian War of Independence. The image of the young warrior queen who died on the battlefield but not in the minds of her people captured the imagination of novelist Mahasweta Devi, who undertook extensive research that encompassed family reminiscence, oral literature, local histories, and more traditional sources. From these she wove a very personal history of a heroine—an unusual woman, widowed at an early age, who grew from a free-spirited child into an independent young leader. 
Devi’s resulting work traces the history of the growing resistance to the British, while building a detailed picture of Lakshmibai as a complex, spirited, full-blooded woman who wears her long tresses unbound at the same time as she prefers a male attire on horseback; who is a cool-headed and far-sighted leader of men, full of warm concern for her soldiers; as well as a mother who worries about her infant son’s well-being. Simultaneously a history, a biography, and an imaginative work of fiction, this book is a valuable contribution to the reclamation of history and historiography by feminist writers.

The Queen of Jhansi (Seagull World Literature)

British & Irish

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Devi, Mahasweta. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Devi, Mahasweta

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Devi, Mahasweta. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Imaginary Maps

Imaginary Maps

Mirror of the Darkest Night

Our Santiniketan (The India List)

Chotti Munda and His Arrow

Chotti Munda and His Arrow

Truth/Untruth (The India List)

The Murderer’s Mother (The India List)

Bait: Four Stories (What Was Communism?)

The Queen of Jhansi (Seagull World Literature)