Devdas (Translated) - A love destroyed by pride #1012793

This edition includes:
• New English translation
• Critical introduction

Two houses stand side by side in a Bengali village — close enough to touch, divided by everything that matters. Out of that narrow gap Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay built the novel that gave South Asian literature its archetype of the tragic lover, a story so concentrated, and so exact about money, pride and shame, that more than twenty films have tried to hold it.

Devdas and Parvati grow up almost as one person, fishing in the same pond, sharing the same childhood. The families stand between them: not with cruelty, but with the quiet arithmetic of prestige, caste and what the neighbours will say. Parvati is given in marriage to someone else. Devdas is sent to the city, where nobody counts his rupees but nobody knows his name either, and where he discovers how easily a life can be dismantled. Then there is Chandramukhi, a courtesan with no honour left to protect, who turns out to be the only person in the novel who sees Devdas clearly — and says so.

This edition brings the Bengali into English as a living book: natural, fluent prose that keeps the comedy of the childhood chapters, the dry voice of the village narrator, and the tenderness and severity of Sarat Chandra's sentences. It is a translation made to be read now, faithful to the substance, the tone and the images of the original. Opening the volume and placed before the author's text is a critical introduction that explores the world of the novel — its ledgers and lime heaps, its marriage market, its caste lines — and what this brief, merciless story still says about love, family and the price of pride.

Add it to your library and read the book behind the legend.