A01=Mahasweta Devi
Author_Mahasweta Devi
Category=FF
Category=FYB
Category=FYT
eq_anthologies-novellas-short-stories
eq_bestseller
eq_crime
eq_fiction
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
Product details
- ISBN 9781906497491
- Weight: 227g
- Dimensions: 12 x 19mm
- Publication Date: 09 Jul 2010
- Publisher: Seagull Books London Ltd
- Publication City/Country: GB
- Product Form: Hardback
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Unlike most of Mahasweta Devi's works, which focus on Bengali tribes and the rural dispossessed, the four stories collected in Bait are located in the urban and suburban criminal underworld, and form an unusual segment of Devi's oeuvre. The first story, "Fisherman", is about a man who recovers the bodies of young boys from the village pond so that the police can pass them off as victims of drowning. "Knife", on the other hand, is a tongue-in-cheek account of the liminal cultural world of West Bengal, which borders Bangladesh. A young woman makes her own protest against an exploitative establishment as a result of abuse by a politician and his cohorts in "Body," and an unemployed middle-class youth discovers himself after his first 'test' killing in the dark story "Killer". This collection of fascinating and unsettling stories is anchored by an in-depth introductory essay by cultural historian Sumanta Banerjee, who has firsthand familiarity with the settings and situations from his crime-reporting past. Banerjee contextualizes the stories within the development of the growing criminal underworld in Bengal today.
Mahasweta Devi is one of India's foremost writers. Her other novels include Mother of 1084 and Chotti Munda and His Arrow. Sumanta Banerjee is a cultural historian and the author of many books, including The Parlour and the Streets: Elite and Popular Culture in Nineteenth Century Calcutta and Dangerous Outcast: The Prostitute in Nineteenth Century Bengal, both published by Seagull Books.
