num_pages: 504
description: Translated for the first time into English Saratchandra's Srikanta was first published over seventy years ago and could perhaps be called the first modern Indian novel...Srikanta the narrator is an aimless drifter a passive spectator who cannot survive without the support of an individual stronger than himself. As a child he idealizes the chaste Annada Didithe epitome of selfless devotion to a worthless husband... As a young man he travels to Burma looking for new experiences and meets the rebellious Abhayawho rejects her violent bigamous husband to live openly with her loverand learns to question the hypocritical social norms that bind a woman down but let a man off. He experiments with becoming a sanyasi is bewitched for a while by the Vaishnavi Kamal Lata and wanders on till his directionless existence finally finds a focuswhen he resigns himself to life with the notorious but stunning Pyari Baiji breaking free of the social values he grew up with.Through his dynamic and arresting characters Saratchandra brings alive nineteenth-century Bengal a prejudice-ridden society that needed to be radically changed. Srikanta set the precedent for socially conscious writing in modern Indian literature.
language: English
title: Srikanta
publisher: Penguin Books India