Narrative
Palamou
পালামৌ
Sanjib Chandra Chattopadhyay · 1880
Synopsis
The narrator recounts a stay in Palamau, a land of forests and hills: the landscapes, the animals, and above all the Koles, whose life, beliefs, festivals and social organisation he describes. He combines observation with a child's curiosity and an irony turned against himself, marvels at the hills that a man of the plains has never seen, and lets one sense in places how humiliating colonial domination is. It is there that he writes that savages are beautiful in the forest as children are on their mother's breast.
Context
The narrative appeared in six instalments in the Bangadarshan, the journal founded by Bankim, from 1880 to 1882, under the pseudonym of Pramathanath Basu, then in book form in 1882. It reads as an ethnography before the term existed. Rabindranath Tagore admired it and devoted an essay to its author; Banglapedia reports that it is said to have given him a taste for travel. Satyajit Ray has a passage from it read in Aranyer Din Ratri. Arnab Bhattacharya produced an English translation in 2014.
Who it is for
A short narrative made of observations, with no plot. No French translation; an English version has existed since 2014.
Prizes and reception
Regarded as its author's greatest literary achievement and as a classic of Bengali travel writing.
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