Four Chapters

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Passion and politics intertwine in Char Adhyay (1934), Rabindranath Tagore's last and perhaps most controversial novel, set in the context of the freedom struggle in pre-Independent India. Ela, a young working woman, comes under the spell of Indranath, a charismatic political activist who advocates the path of terror. She joins his band of underground rebels, vowing never to marry, and to devote her life to the nation's cause. But through her relationship with Atindra, a poet and romantic who grows disenchanted after joining the group, Ela realizes the hollowness of Indranath's machinations. The lovers now face a terrible choice. This new translation of Char Adhyay brings Tagore's text to life in contemporary idiom, while evoking the charged atmosphere of the story's historical setting.

Somdatta Mandal is Professor and Head of English at the Department of English and Other Modern European Languages, Visva-Bharati, Santiniketan. Having a teaching career that spans 32 years, she has held several administrative posts in the university. Paper-setter, examiner and adjudicator for doctoral dissertations across several universities in India and the SAARC nations, she has lectured widely in national and international fora. A recipient of several prestigious international fellowships and awards from the Fulbright Foundation, Charles Wallace Trust, Rockefeller Foundation, Shastri Indo-Canadian Institute and Sahitya Akademi, her areas of interest are American literature, contemporary fiction, film and culture studies, diaspora studies and translation. She has published three books, five volumes of translation, edited and co-edited 22 books, published above 90 research articles in national and international journals and anthologies. Somdatta Mandal has published translations of several travel narratives, among which are Krishnabhabini Das?s A Bengali Lady in England (2015); Wanderlust: Travels of the Tagore Family (2014); Durgabati Ghose?s The Westward Traveller (2010) and Hariprabha Takeda?s The Journey of a Bengali Lady to Japan and Other Essays (2017).

Rabindranath Tagore

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