Samaresh Basu Rachanabali 5 [Hardcover]

Someone once said that Samresh Basu was the "Prince of Bengali literature." Critics may view this statement as an exaggeration. But can we deny that, in literature, he was a monumental talent, like a towering tree? With a combative spirit that turned adversity into advantage, he rose from a very humble background to the heights of fame and recognition. Just as his literature, with its diversity of themes, has taken many turns like a flowing river over time, his life too advanced along diverse paths, spreading the colors of living.

He had no intense moral pretensions or idealistic nonsense about life. In his way of living and approach to survival, he was entirely unique. Life and literature had merged for him, and that is why there was no deception in his creations. He himself wrote: "Whatever responsibility literature has, it belongs to life. Life is greater than literature; for this truth, a writer doesn't need deep practice, for it is always vividly alive." Flesh-and-blood men and women, firmly connected to the earth in every sense, were the subjects of his literary struggles. He never excluded anyone, never turned anyone away. He believed in finding the depths of humanity through physical relationships, which often led to him being misunderstood.

Samresh believed that to truly capture life, one couldn’t just be a life artist; one had to be a life hunter as well. And he seemed to embody exactly that: both a life artist and a life hunter. The beginning of Samresh’s literary life started with Noyonpurer Mati (The Soil of Noyonpur), although his first published novel was Uttarang.

This fifth volume includes four novels written during the fifth phase of his creative life: Shalgheri'r Simanay (At the Boundary of Shalgheri), Tridhara (Three Streams), Aporichito (The Stranger), and Bishwas (Faith). There are also two novellas: Alind and Torai, along with a mystery novel: Swarnachonchu (Golden Beak). Through these works, we see Samresh's continuous and varied efforts to fully observe and reflect his own personal identity, an identity that is both complex and controversial. In the preface to this volume, Professor Saroj Bandopadhyay offers a profound analysis of this aspect of Samresh’s identity.