Samaresh Basu Rachanabali 4 [Hardcover]

Someone once said that Samresh Basu was the "Prince of Bengali literature." Critics may consider this statement an exaggeration. But can we deny that, in literature, he was a towering talent, like a massive 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 changed course over time like a flowing river, his life too moved forward in diverse ways, 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. Samresh’s literary career began with Noyonpurer Mati (The Soil of Noyonpur), although his first published novel was Uttarang.

This fourth volume includes five novels written during the fourth phase of his creative life (1966-1972): Jagaddal (The Abyss), Tiribhuboner Pare (Beyond Three Worlds), Prajapati (The Butterfly), Patak (The Fall), and Swikarokti (Confession). It also includes five story collections: Bonlata, Manush (Human), Chetanar Andhokare (In the Darkness of Consciousness), Chhera Tamosuk (The Torn Talisman), and Dorshita (The Raped). 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 provides an in-depth analysis of this aspect of Samresh’s identity.