Join us for an intimate evening with fellow readers. The theme of our books will vary by month, always with a mind to forwarding uncommon international works that will nourish and enrich our understanding of the world and each other.
DATE CHANGE: On Saturday, April 27th we will gather to discuss The Inhumans and Other Stories: A Selection of Bengali Science Fiction, edited and translated by Bodhisattva Chattopadhyay. From MIT Press:
The first English translation of a cult science fiction favorite by Hemendra Kumar Roy, one of the giants of early Bangla literature, and other sf stories from the colonial period in India.
Kalpavigyan—science fiction written to excite Bengali speakers about science, as well as to persuade them to evolve beyond the limitations of religion, caste, and class—became popular in the early years of the twentieth century. Translated into English for the first time, in this collection you'll discover The Inhumans (1935), Hemendrakumar Roy's satirical novella about a lost race of Bengali supermen in Uganda. Also included are Jagadananda Ray's “Voyage to Venus” (1895), Nanigopal Majumdar's “The Mystery of the Giant” (1931), and Manoranjan Bhattacharya's “The Martian Purana” (1931).
