Chander Pahar  (Bengali, Undefined, Bandyopadhyay Bhibhutibushan)

One of the most popular and celebrated adventure novels in the Bengali language, Moon Mountain is the story of a Bengali boy in the forests of Africa.

Summary of the Book

Shankar Roy Chowdury, an ordinary boy from a Bengali village, secures a job as a clerk in the Uganda Railway and fuelled by his childhood passions and dreams of following in the footsteps of adventurers like Livingstone, Mungo Park, and Marco Polo, he rushes to Africa without a second thought. Africa, he discovers, is a far cry from the adventures he read in his childhood. Man-eating lions who claim the lives of his newfound friends and a black mamba which tries to sink its fangs into him, all of them join together in opening Shankar's eyes about Africa. In his stay there, he meets, rescues and nurses Diego Alvarez, a Portugese explorer and gold and diamond prospector who entices Shankar with his stories of a rare, uncut yellow diamond. Shankar joins Diego and together they venture into the dangers of Africa to find the diamond, and the promise of treasure most alluring. This story invokes memories of adventure stories of the eighteenth and nineteenth century, and has since been adapted into a movie directed by Kamaleshwar Mukherjee starring Bengali actor Dev.

About Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay

Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay was a Bengali writer. He is best remembered for Pather Panchali and Ichhamati, among several others.
A graduate of Ripon College, he was awarded the 1951 Rabindra Puraskar, the most prestigious literary award in the West Bengal state of India posthumously for his work.