An Unfinished Song

Woman-centric writings in English as well as in Indian languages are now a significant area of reading and research. This edited volume presents Swarnakumari Debi Ghosal’s own translation of her work, originally published in Bengali in 1898 under the title Kahake. The novel is primarily a love story with all the makings of a romance: love, separation, longing, misunderstanding, coincidences, mistaken identity, delightful unexpected discovery, re-union, and fulfillment. But importantly, An Unfinished Song addresses several issues related to the man-woman relationship, marriage, the construction of female identity, the impact of the West, the East-West encounter, and nationalism. Including a perceptive and analytically rich introduction by C. Vijayasree, a biographical note on the author, explanatory notes, glossary, and bibliography, this edition will appeal to students and teachers of Indian writing in translation. The book will also appeal to those interested in Bengali life and literature of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, as well as general readers.