Je Kotha Ittibrite Nei (Bengali) - যে কথা ইতিবৃত্তে নেই
About this ebook
What is not in history is fiction—but fiction that is rooted in reality and moulded by memory in this case. Is this fantasy in the guise of a novel, or a dark chapter in the author's life, which got left out of his autobiography? Manoranjan Byapari wrote this book some years after his two-part memoir released and received much critical acclaim, and he left it to the reader to separate the real from what’s been imagined or shaped selectively by memory.
It tells the story of Bengal and its people caught in the inexorable cycle of politics and crime, and in the tussle between the haves and have-nots.
So, this novel is not just a supplementary text to the author's memoir. Sitting in the darkness of a prison cell, Byapari listens to the monologue of a disembodied voice. Is the owner of that voice the author's doppelganger?
About the author
Manoranjan Byapari writes in Bengali. He taught himself to read and write at the age of twenty-four when he was in prison. He has worked as a rickshaw-puller, a sweeper, a porter, a librarian. Until 2018, he was working as a cook at the Hellen Keller Institute for the Deaf and Blind in West Bengal. In 2018, the English translation of his memoir, Ittibrite Chandal Jibon (Interrogating My Chandal Life), received the Hindu Prize for Non-fiction. In 2019, he was awarded the Gateway Lit Fest Writer of the Year Prize. Also, the English translation of his novel Batashe Baruder Gandha (There’s Gunpowder in the Air) was shortlisted for the JCB Prize 2019, the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature 2019, the Crossword Prize 2019 and the Mathrubhumi Book of the Year Prize 2020. The English translation of his novel Chhera Chhera Jibon (Imaan) was longlisted for the JCB Prize 2022. He also received the Shakti Bhatt Prize for his body of work in 2022.
In 2021, Byapari became a member of the Bengal Legislative Assembly.