Timeless Tales in Translation: A Representative Anthology of Bengali and Hindi Short Stories

This volume of short stories brings together different voices that speak of the vagaries of human experience, of vignettes of human emotions that resonate so much in the times we live too. Translated in a wonderfully lucid style, these stories by great writers from the Indian subcontinent, known and little known, in the genre will surely have a worldwide appeal. – Dr. Nishi Pulugurtha, Academic and Author

Chaitali Sengupta brings together in translation a dozen short stories written by a galaxy of writers of the Indian subcontinent. Sengupta admirably captures the energy, texture, and voice of an interesting mix of stories of diverse shades, each author displaying a distinctive style. In her sensitive engagement with the source texts, she is unambiguous and transparent, and this makes the volume eminently readable. – Amita Ray, Academic, author, translator

The art of translation is intricate, for the essence of the story must be retained. I must congratulate Chaitali Sengupta for her effort in sharing the impressive stories of Bengali and Hindi authors, by beautifully translating them into English. The translation is marvellously accurate. She has selected the most appealing stories, the simple nature lover: Bolai, or the salt inspector who is in a dilemma to choose between ethics and money, the pathos of poverty in ‘A winter’s night’. It takes courage to translate the Nobel Laureate Tagore, the learned Jai Shankar Prasad and the detailed presentation of the evergreen author Premchand, and Sengupta has done this with great elan and has acquainted us with many memorable stories. Through her work, Sengupta has given us an insight into the Indian mindset, in which the global English reader can identify glimpses of himself/herself. – Ipsita Sharan, Academic reviewer.

Chaitali Sengupta writes and translates fiction, non-fiction, and poetry. A reviewer and a journalist, her debut collection of prose poem “Cross Stitched Words”, received the ‘Honorable Mention’ award at the New England book festival 2021. Recently, her collaborative translation “Legends Speak: Bengali Women’s Narratives in translation” was launched. Her other two works of translation are “Quiet whispers of our heart” & “A thousand words of heart”. She received an award of recognition from the Foundation Literary International Hollande-Cuba for her works and poems. Her work ‘She Walks over the Flood’ is a part of a literary project done in collaboration with Environmental Humanities Center, Amsterdam. She has contributed to esteemed anthologies and to well-known online/print journals. Presently, she is working on a translation work featuring the Dutch author, Louis Couperus.