Chokher Bali

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Tagore elaborately records early twentieth-century Bengali society through his central character, a rebellious widow who wants to live a life of her own. Tagore said about the novel, I have always regretted the ending'. Chokher Bali explores the forbidden emotions unleashed when a beautiful young widow enters the seemingly harmonious world of a newly married couple. This path-breaking novel by Rabindranath Tagore weaves a tangled web of relationships between the pampered and self-centred Mahendra, his innocent, childlike bride Asha, their staunch friend Bihari, and the wily, seductive Binodini, whose arrival transforms the lives of all concerned. Radha Chakravarty's translation brings the world of Tagore'sfiction to life, in lucid, idiomatic prose.

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Rabindranath Tagore (1861 - 1941) is a major figure in Indian and world literature. Born into a privileged, progressive family during the Bengal Renaissance, he started writing when he was very young. In 1913, he became the first Asian to win the Nobel Prize. Tagore was a versatile writer who produced masterpieces in multiple genres, including autobiography, fiction, poetry, drama, satire, humour, letters and travel writing. He was also an accomplished artist. He composed the national anthems of India and Bangladesh. Although he did not engage directly in politics, he felt deeply about social and political issues. In 1919, he rejected the Knighthood conferred upon him by the British Crown, in protest against the massacre at Jallianwallah Bagh. Tagore was the founder of Visva-Bharati, a university based in Santiniketan in Bengal, where students were offered an eclectic international education, in an atmosphere in close harmony with nature. Some of his best known works are the poems of Gitanjali, novels such as Chokher Bali, Gora, Ghare Baire and Char Adhyay, plays such as Dakghar, Raktakarabi and Arupratan, the songs collected in Gitabitan, dance dramas like Chandalika and Chitrangada, and volumes of prose such as Sadhana and Religion of Man.