Vanavasi  (Paperback, Telugu, Bibhuti Bhushan Bandhopadhyaya)

Vanavasi, 2009, Bibhutibhushan Bandopadhyay, translated from the Bengali by Soorampudi Seetharam, 278 pages, Rs. 200/- This is a famous much-loved Bengali novel by Bibhutibhushan Bandopadhyay based on his long and arduous years in northern Bihar in the forests. As ancient trees fall to the cultivator’s axe, indigenous tribes–to whom the forest had been home for millennia–lose their ancient way of life. The promise of ‘progress’ and ‘development’ brings in streams of landless laborers, impoverished schoolmasters and starving boys from around the region, and the narrator chronicles in visionary prose the tale of destruction and dispossession that is the universal saga of man’s struggle to bend nature to his will.