ABSTRACT
The extract from Tarasankar Bandyopadhyay, Mahasweta Devi’s English monograph on the iconic Bengali writer, reveals her incisiveness as a literary historian and critic and also provides a window to her own literary values. Contrasting his literary practice with that of Manik Bandyopadhyay and Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay, Devi argues that Tarasankar was a man of tradition in his values, choice of themes, and his going back to epic and mythological forms. His popularity, she asserts, was due to his close first-hand knowledge of rural life and agricultural economy, his focus on an entire group of people rather than on a single individual or family, and his compelling style as a story teller. His failures, Devi says, lie in his lack of familiarity with urban systems and the role of industry in national life, his inability to adapt his style to contemporary themes, the looseness of structure in his novels, and his moralistic, conservative outlook. She insists, though, that for his epical novels his reputation will outlive that of his contemporaries, as the first true Indian novelist that Bengal has produced.
