Number of Pages: 144. Publication Year: 2020. Publisher: Orient Blackswan
ISBN: 9789352879045. Price: Rs. 295.00/-
Reviewed by
Ms. Adishree Vats
Assistant Professor, Department of English Studies, Akal University, Talwandi Sabo, Punjab. Email: vatsadishree8@gmail.com
Volume 12, Number 4, July-September, 2020 I Full Text PDF
DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v12n4.20
The book, “A Primal Issue: Stories of Women”, is a gripping, enthralling anthology of analytical stories, translated by Subrata Basu, and written originally in Bengali by Jagdish Gupta, a “trailblazer” (p. xv) of modernist movement in India. With its epicentric plunge on the word “primal”, the book very meticulously exhibits a valorous investigation of interdictions and anathemas existing in the splendid post-Tagore chapter of Bengali literature. This revelatory compendium stresses on Jagdish Gupta’s seven translated stories, all originally published between 1927 and 1959, with females as chief characters, scrutinizing the intense connotations of life at personal as well as societal levels. Every chapter is dedicated to one story so as to undrape the aggregation of the dilemmas, quandaries, and predicaments of Bengalis in general and women in particular for whom the repugnance of conservatism continues to exist. The stories unsparingly underscore the barbarous realities of the society, such as polygamy, child-marriage, widow-remarriage, women’s oppression and marginalization..Full Text PDF