The Black Rose

by Bose, Buddhadeva; Sinha, Arunava

• ISBN13: 9780143469889
• ISBN10: 0143469886
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2025-08-26
• Publisher: India Penguin Modern Classics

Summary

A young student in pre-Independence Dacca, Ranajit Dutta is relatively untouched by the patriotic fervour gripping the rest of the country. He is suffocated by and often critical of, the constricted environment and superstition ridden society he lives in. He seeks an escape through poetry and his search for the embodiment of universal womanhood. But one event shakes up his idealism and fundamentally changes his relationships with the women in his life: his first love Mitu Bardhan; his affectionate but neglected aunt Kajol; his revolutionary friend Bulbul; his naive, adoring wife Nalini. A man's perennial quest for the unattainable, Black Rose also brings alive the heady idealism and the charged years when India was struggling to be free.

Author Biography

Author:
Buddhadeva Bose (1908-1974) is widely considered to be the successor to Rabindranath Tagore for the versatility and breadth of his literary work. A multifaceted writer and one of the leading lights of modern Bengali literature, Bose combines lyricism with a style of writing uniquely his own to create an unmatched legacy.

Translator:
Arunava Sinha translates classic, modern and contemporary Bengali fiction and non-fiction from Bangladesh and India into English. He also translates fiction from English into Bengali. Over eighty of his translations have been published so far in India, the UK and the USA. He teaches creative writing at Ashoka University, where he is also the co-director of the Ashoka Centre for Translation, and is the Books Editor at Scroll.in.