The Life of Sharatchandra Chattopadhyay: Drifter and Dreamer [Hardcover]

Drifter and Dreamer is a copiously researched and elegantly written biography . . . This book ought to be translated in Bengali for there is no biography of Sharatchandra in Bengali that can match Sil's comprehensive and excellent life history of the famed author and storyteller.I really enjoyed Drifter and Dreamer . . . The spread is just right for the subject, the depth impressive, and the language is Sil's signaturetaken all togetheroutstanding.?The Life of Sharatchandra Chatopadhyay presents a historical critical assessment of the novelists upbringing and the experiences that informed his work. The author exposes Sharatchandras innate conservative worldview and his romantic platonic concept of human sexuality that informs all his love stories.Sharatchandra Chattopadhyay has been the most popular writer of novels and short stories in his native Bengaland in India at large. Despite this, he remains unrecognized in the English speaking world. Narasingha P. Sil fills this void by presenting a historical critical assessment of his upbringing and the experiences that influenced his masterful and magnificent work. The Life of Sharatchandra Chattopadhyay rescues the authentic man, a caste-conscious and patriarchal Brahmin of colonial Bengal, from the cuckoo land of gratuitous praise and panegyric showered on the Aparajeya Kathasilpi, the invincible wordsmith. The author exposes Sharatchandras innate conservative worldview and his romantic platonic concept of human sexuality that inform all his love stories. In many respects Sharatchandra resembles his formidable European forbear, Jean Jacques Rousseau of Enlightenment France. The concluding chapter of Sils biographical study introduces this pioneering comparison between the two mena veritable tour de force.PrefaceAcknowledgmentsTranslation, Transliteration, Orthography, Bengali CalendarChapter OneProlegomenaPolitical and Social Condition of Late Colonial IndiaChapter TwoSharatchandras Parents: Matilal and BhublS?