Six Acres and a Third (Chha Mana Atha Guntha)

This sly and humorous novel by Fakir Mohan Senapati—one of the pioneering spirits of modern Indian literature and an early activist in the fight against the destruction of native Indian languages—is both a literary work and a historical document. Set in Orissa in the 1830s, Six Acres and a Third provides a unique ‘view from below’ of Indian village life under colonial rule. This graceful translation faithfully conveys the rare and compelling account of how the more unsavory aspects of colonialism affected life in rural India.