The Greatest Bengali Stories Ever Told

Book Review 

Title: The Greatest Bengali Stories Ever Told 

Selected and translated by- Arunava Sinha

Genre:Short stories

 I received this book at a gift Christmas book exchange and was excited to read it.Arunava Sinha has compiled and translated twenty-one stories that were originally in Bengali. 

The authors of the stories are exceptional story writers and the stories are a slice of life and bring out the flavour of Calcutta. 

The authors include literary greats like Rabindranath Tagore, Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay, Satyajit Ray, Ritwik Ghatak and Mahasweta Devi. The language is simple and each story is about day today life. The line up begins with Rabindranath Tagore's masterpiece 'The Kabuliwallah' so naturally it sets a bench mark of sorts.

The rest of the stories fall to live up to my expectations. Sadly,I found most of the stories long drawn and uninteresting. In fact I lost interest midway and it was a task to complete reading the rest of the stories. 

I think a Bengali reader will be able to relate better to these stories and enjoy them more.It's not that the stories are not good or not well-translated, it just fails to appeal due to different geographic location and lack of connection to the local flavour present in the stories. The read was long drawn as the stories failed to create a spark of interest. For me, this book was disappointing, but maybe for a Bengali these stories are more relatable.