Truth/Untruth / Devi Mahasweta, translated by Anjum Katyal.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Mahāśvetā Debī, 1926-2016, author.

Contributor:

Katyal, Anjum, translator.

Series:

India list

The India list

Language:

Bengali

English

Subjects (All):

Kolkata (India)--History--20th century--Fiction.

Kolkata (India).

India--Kolkata.

Genre:

Fiction.

History.

Physical Description:

151 pages ; 23 cm.

Other Title:

Satya-Asatya.

Place of Publication:

New York : Seagull Books, 2023.

Summary:

A trenchant, darkly humorous, and unsentimental look at Calcutta society. Set in Calcutta in the mid-1980s, Truth/Untruth is a fast-paced thriller built around the death of the pregnant Jamuna--a maid in a newly affluent residential apartment complex--and Arjun, the upwardly mobile businessman who seduced her. Packed with a cast of colorful characters, this novel is a trenchant, darkly humorous, and unsentimental look at the different segments of Calcutta society: from the middle-class culture vultures to the unscrupulous "promoter" class and the domestic helpers and slum goons who form an intrinsic part of the city's life. All are implicated in a complex web of guilt and bizarre twists and turns. Sex, lies, death--the great modernist themes--run like a thread through this book, exposing societal greed, lust, corruption, and moral hypocrisy with a sardonic tone that spares none. An unusual novel by an author who is otherwise known for her hard-hitting activist-feminist stories, Truth/Untruth underlines the exploitative vicious cycle that defines urban relations between the haves and have-nots.

Notes:

Originally published in Bengali as Satya-Asatya in 1986.

ISBN:

9781803090771

1803090774

OCLC:

1304461420

Publisher Number:

99994056604