Deoyal by Bimal Kar [Hardcover]

It has been more than thirty years since the first volume of Bimal Kar's novel Deoyal was published. Completing this three-part novel took him seven long years. While the three volumes were once available separately, they have not been obtainable for many years. After all this time, the complete version of Deoyal is now being published.

That Deoyal is the longest novel written by Bimal Kar is not the only significant fact; many critics consider Deoyal to be his finest work. Whether it is truly the "finest" is a matter of debate, but there is no doubt that the novel, set against the backdrop of World War II, presents a remarkably accurate portrayal of the lower-middle-class Bengali life in Kolkata, which is rare in Bengali literature.

Between 1939 and 1945, during the horrors of the Second World War, Bengal witnessed a crisis, disintegration, and decay in the lives of its people. This novel is a faithful document of those years. War, evacuation, fear, the Quit India Movement, the August Revolution, Bengal's famine, political conflicts, the role of the Communists, the disillusionment and deviation of the Gandhian movement—these events occurred rapidly, and their direct and indirect effects on our social and familial lives, as well as the principles of justice, cherished beliefs, mutual relationships, and concepts of purity, were deeply scarred by the brutal impacts of the era. Deoyal presents an extraordinary narrative of this.

At the same time, the novel also tells the story of those individuals who, amid such chaos and disaster, still tried to overcome the crisis with a sense of humanity.

Bimal Kar wrote Deoyal during his youth, but it can undoubtedly be said that no other work of his combines life experience, emotion, and a sense of reality as this one does. While Deoyal stands as a definitive record of a particularly troubled period in Bengali life, it is not merely a depiction of time and social decay. It transcends those narrow boundaries and will ultimately be remembered as a faithful story of human life.