Samaresh Basu Rachanabali 2 [Hardcover]

Someone once said that Samresh Basu was the "Prince of Bengali literature." Critics may regard this statement as an exaggeration. But can we deny that, in literature, he was a towering talent, like a giant tree? With a combative spirit that turned adversity into advantage, he rose from very humble beginnings to the peak of fame and recognition. Just as his literature, with its thematic variety, has taken many turns like a flowing river at different times, his life too moved along diverse paths, spreading the colors of living.

He had no intense moral pretensions or idealistic nonsense about life. In his manner of living and in his approach to survival, he was completely unique. Life and literature had become one 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 to engage in 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 depth of humanity through physical relationships, which often led to him being misunderstood.

Samresh believed that to truly capture life, one could not just be an artist of life, one had to be a hunter of life as well. And it seemed he was exactly that: both a life artist and a life hunter. The first phase of Samresh’s literary life, or his "Udayan phase," began with Noyonpurer Mati (The Soil of Noyonpur), although his first published novel was Uttarang. Even though this was his second work in terms of publication time, from the beginning to his last days, Samresh constantly reinvented himself in his novels. He never stayed in one place.

This second volume includes four of his novels from the second phase of his literary career (1955–1962): Sodagar, Ganga, Baghini, and Chhinnabadha. Also included are three of his short story collections from this period: Monomukur, Pasharini, and Phulborshia. In the preface to this volume, Professor Saroj Bandopadhyay, Samresh's lifelong friend and prominent critic, offers an exceptional analysis of Samresh as both a novelist and a short story writer.