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"Shyamal Kumar Pramanik is one of the most influential writers of Bangla Dalit literary movement whose evocative and powerful fictional worlds unveil the oppressive structures of caste discrimination in India. This volume brings his writings to a new readership with English translations of a selection of his most influential works. Part of the Voices from the Margins series, this book seeks to make visible literary texts and traditions from various Indian languages and bring Dalit writers and literature to the centre-stage. Pramanik's work focuses on lives and lifestyles of the people in the Sunderbans, one of the largest mangrove forests in the world, and an ecologically vital zone. Drawn from personal experience, many of these stories paint in vivid colours the deprivations that shape life in this part of the world. His fiction throws into sharp relief the workings of caste in Bengal, and elsewhere in India. His poetry, on the other hand, has a more overtly activist tone and makes strident demands for social change. These translations are buttressed by an in-depth interview with the writer which includes his reflections on his life, society and on his writings, opening up new possibilities of understanding his work in its larger social context. The book also creates an academic framework within which Pramanik's fiction and poetry can be read and critically analysed. This critical edition will be of interest to students and researchers of literature, especially those engaged with contemporary Indian/South Asian literary cultures, comparative literature, modern Indian literature, minority studies, and Dalit studies. It will also be useful to students and researchers of social sciences and humanities, literature, culture, history and sociology"--...
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