Mahasweta Devi – författare

Imaginary Maps presents three stories from noted Bengali writer Mahasweta Devi in conjunction with readings of these tales by famed cultural and literary critic, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak. Weaving history, myth and current political realities, these stories explore troubling motifs in contemporary Indian life through the figures and narratives of indigenous tribes in India. At once delicate and violent, Devi's stories map the experiences of the "tribals" and tribal life under decolonization. In "The Hunt," "Douloti the Bountiful" and the deftly wrought allegory of tribal agony "Pterodactyl, Pirtha, and Puran Sahay," Ms. Devi links the specific fate of tribals in India to that of marginalized peoples everywhere.Gayatri Spivak's readings of these stories connect the necessary "power lines" within them, not only between local and international structures of power (patriarchy, nationalisms, late capitalism), but also to the university.

It's the mid-to-late 1800s and the British have banished Wajid Ali Shah the nawab of Awadh in Lucknow to Calcutta. To the sound of the soulful melody of the sarangi, the mercurial courtesan Laayl-e Aasman is playing a dangerous game of love, loyalty, deception, and betrayal. Bajrangi and Kundan, bound by their love for each other and for Laayl-e, struggle to keep their balance. Ranging across generations and geography, the scale of Laayl-e's story sweeps the devil, a crime lord, and many other remarkable characters into a heady mix.Mirror of the Darkest Night is almost an aberration in Mahasweta Devi's oeuvre. Known for her activism and hard-hitting indictment of social inequalities, she pays close attention to detail in this sparkling novel. It offers a rare glimpse of Devi's talent for telling the sort of story she normally eschewed and it's a cracker of a tale.

A brief, evocative memoir from one of India’s greatest writers.“Like a dazzling feather that has fluttered down from some unknown place. . . . How long will the feather keep its colours, waiting? The ‘feather’ stands for memories of childhood. Memories don’t wait.”  In Our Sanitikentan, the late Mahasweta Devi, one of India’s most celebrated writers, vividly narrates her days as a schoolgirl in the 1930s. As the aging author struggles to recapture vignettes of her childhood, these reminiscences bring to the written page not only her individual sensibility but an entire ethos.  Santiniketan is home to the school and university founded by the foremost literary and cultural icon of India, Rabindranath Tagore. In these pages, a forgotten Santiniketan, seen through the innocent eyes of a young girl, comes to life—the place, its people, flora and fauna, along with its educational environment, culture of free creative expression, vision of harmonious coexistence between natural and human worlds, and the towering presence of Tagore himself. Alongside, we get a glimpse of the private Mahasweta—her inner life, family and associates, and the early experiences that shaped her personality.  A nostalgic journey to a bygone era, harking back to its simple yet profound values—so distant today and so urgent yet again—Our Santiniketan is an invaluable addition to Devi’s rich oeuvre available in English translation.

Written in 1980, this novel by prize-winning Indian writer Mahasweta Devi, translated and introduced by Gayatri Chakravorty Sprivak, is remarkable for the way in which it touches on vital issues that have in subsequent decades grown into matters of urgent social concern. Written by one of India's foremost novelists, and translated by an eminent cultural and critical theorist.Ranges over decades in the life of Chotti – the central character – in which India moves from colonial rule to independence, and then to the unrest of the 1970s.Traces the changes, some forced, some welcome, in the daily lives of a marginalized rural community.Raises questions about the place of the tribal on the map of national identity, land rights and human rights, the 'museumization' of 'ethnic' cultures, and the justifications of violent resistance as the last resort of a desperate people.Represents enlightening reading for students and scholars of postcolonial literature and postcolonial studies.

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.

A tense sociopolitical novel exploring power, violence, and morality in 1970s India.  The Murderer’s Mother takes readers to the late 1970s in the Indian state of West Bengal, where the Communist Party–led Left Front has just been voted into power.  It tells the story of Tapan, who has been installed as a gang leader by the most powerful man in the locality in order to kill “unwanted obstacles,” which he does, one after another. Tapan knows there is no other way he can earn a living, but at the same time, he is desperate to protect his family. He tries to stop petty crime and assaults on women, even as he protects his patron’s interests. Through the dissonance, he becomes both a feared and revered figure, but his patron’s game becomes clear: now the murderer, too, must be eliminated.

A collection of Mahasweta Devi's activist essays, reportage, and editorials on rural development and dispossession.  What do India’s poorest communities reveal about power, land, and survival? In the late 1970s, writer Mahasweta Devi shifted her focus to the lives of Adivasi (Indigenous peoples of the Indian subcontinent) and Dalit communities in eastern India, especially Bihar and West Bengal. Traveling widely and staying with the communities she wrote about, she drew on these firsthand encounters in her writing. She also edited the Bengali quarterly Bortika, making the journal a space for peasants, laborers, workers, and other marginalized groups to speak for themselves.The Slaves of Palamau and Other Writings brings together a representative selection from her activist prose of the 1980s and early 1990s, drawn from essays, reportage, and editorials. These pieces examine rural development; dispossession and land alienation; environmental damage; and the conditions of landless laborers, sharecroppers, bonded and contract workers, miners, and Indigenous communities, with the steady attention that also informs her fiction.

Mahasweta Devi is one of India's foremost literary figures. Mother of 1084 is one of her most widely read works, written during the height of the Naxalite agitation - a militant communist uprising that was brutally repressed by the Indian government and led to the widespread murder of young rebels across Bengal. This novel focuses on the trauma of a mother who awakens one morning to the shattering news that her son is lying dead in the morgue and her struggle to understand his decision to be a Naxalite. Breast Stories is a collection of short fiction about the breast as more than a symbol of beauty, eroticism, or motherhood, but as a harsh indictment of an exploitative social system and a weapon of resistance. At a time when violence towards women in India has escalated exponentially, Devi exposes the inherently vicious systems in Indian society. Old Women tells the touching, poignant tales of two timeworn women - Dulali, a widow since childhood, who is now an old woman preoccupied only with day-to-day survival, and Andi, who loses her eyesight due to a combination of poverty, societal indifference, and government apathy.All three volumes, written in Devi's hard-hitting yet sensitive prose, are significant milestones in India's feminist literary landscape.

Mahasweta Devi is one of India's foremost literary figures. Mother of 1084 is one of her most widely read works, written during the height of the Naxalite agitation - a militant communist uprising that was brutally repressed by the Indian government and led to the widespread murder of young rebels across Bengal. This novel focuses on the trauma of a mother who awakens one morning to the shattering news that her son is lying dead in the morgue and her struggle to understand his decision to be a Naxalite. Breast Stories is a collection of short fiction about the breast as more than a symbol of beauty, eroticism, or motherhood, but as a harsh indictment of an exploitative social system and a weapon of resistance. At a time when violence towards women in India has escalated exponentially, Devi exposes the inherently vicious systems in Indian society. Old Women tells the touching, poignant tales of two timeworn women - Dulali, a widow since childhood, who is now an old woman preoccupied only with day-to-day survival, and Andi, who loses her eyesight due to a combination of poverty, societal indifference, and government apathy.All three volumes, written in Devi's hard-hitting yet sensitive prose, are significant milestones in India's feminist literary landscape.