Brahma's Weapon Stories
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Uitgever: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
- 9781492162216
- 01 oktober 2013
- 296 pagina's
Samenvatting
Each of the twenty-one stories in Brahmas Weapon, carefully selected from the great writer Ashapurna Debis extensive oeuvre and brilliantly translated from Bengali, highlights the tensions inherent in a society of close-knit and interdependent families. Focusing on the charged relationships between men and women, Ashapurna illuminates every facet of her heroes lives with the light of her intellect, insight, and compassion. And her hero is the Bengali woman, in many ways the everywoman of a changing world, powerless yet powerful, challenged at every turn yet challenging the world of men, fighting back, spirited, indomitable.
In Poddolotas Dream, the title character returns triumphant and magnanimous to the scene of a harrowing childhood; it is only at the very end of the story that we find out exactly where her triumph lies. In Glass Beads Diamonds, a woman attends a wedding reception at her estranged in-laws, bearing a gift for the bride; and such is the authors skill that without being told we know how much that gift has cost the giver. In Grieving for Oneself, told from a mans point of view, a midnight scare shows the protagonist, immobile in his bed, precisely how he fits into his world, this world hes worked his life to build. It is, as in so many of Ashapurnas stories, a compelling insight, natural and shocking, terrible and human.
Ashapurna is one of those rare writers able to render the voice of an entire culture, to capture its deepest and most abiding traditions indelibly, as also its revealing moments; to bring forth an entire society fully formed and unforgettable. Her created world is Bengal, her creature the Bengali woman within the Bengali family, her creation all the ebb and flow of the Bengali womans universe, a world cartwheeling through the stars, dancing among the eternal truths. Her hero is this woman, this middle-class warrior, among her husband and children, among her sisters and neighbors, tight in this web of attachment, utterly indispensable yet utterly alone, reaching for understanding, for sustenance. But she is the provider, not the provided for. She is the sustainer, not the sustained.
The characters at the center of these stories pay a price for their knowledge; but it is the price we all pay, as we live our lives, in measures of disappointment, grief, angerlit by moments of laughter and connection. It is Ashapurnas triumph, her gift of diamonds to the reader, that she shows us all of this in the compressed spaces of these stories. Reading Ashapurna, we come away understanding, sympathetic, illuminednot only about her characters but also about ourselves.
These translations by the critically acclaimed translator Prasenjit Gupta seek to preserve the flavor of the original Bengali as much as possible, to carry across the meanings and metaphors of Ashapurnas world. The translator has avoided the too-familiar path of hackneyed English idiom in order to create an English that serves the Bengali writer and the Bengali characters, a fresh new dialect that gives the reader an insight into the Bengali language and, since language is shaped by and shaper of tradition, into Bengali culture. Translations from Bengaliand perhaps from any languagehave seldom been so effective and powerful; this collection is a glorious example of the translators art.
Jhumpa Lahiris superbly thoughtful introduction to the collection prepares the reader for the grand sweep of the stories, for the universal verities embedded within their narrow domestic walls. This well-researched essay by the accomplished writer and scholar acquaints the reader with the time and place of these tales and presents to the English-speaking world a literary genius, admired for decades in her own country but only now being given her rightful place in the pantheon of world literature.
Productspecificaties
Inhoud
- Oorspronkelijke releasedatum
- 01 oktober 2013
- Aantal pagina's
- 296
Betrokkenen
- Hoofdauteur
- Ashapurna Debi
- Tweede Auteur
- Prasenjit Gupta
- Co Auteur
- Ashapurna Debi
- Hoofduitgeverij
- Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
Vertaling
- Eerste Vertaler
- Prasenjit Gupta
- Tweede Vertaler
- Prasenjit Gupta
Overige kenmerken
- Product breedte
- 152 mm
- Product hoogte
- 17 mm
- Product lengte
- 229 mm
- Verpakking breedte
- 152 mm
- Verpakking hoogte
- 17 mm
- Verpakking lengte
- 229 mm
- Verpakkingsgewicht
- 435 g
EAN
- EAN
- 9781492162216
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