Northlume Classics
Skip to product information
That necklace is the life of your son.
Not yet released. This edition is finished and in production. Write to the press and we will let you know the day it goes on sale.
About this edition
Princes and Rakshasa demons, clever youngest daughters, ghosts and talking birds, a life hidden away inside a necklace, the origin of opium and of rubies: the twenty-two tales in this book are the fairy stories of Bengal, told for a hundred generations by village women in the evenings and set down here, at last, in English.
Lal Behari Day, a Bengali writer and minister, heard hundreds of these stories as a boy from an old story-teller in his village. Late in life, urged on by a friend, he tracked down the best tellers he could find and translated their tales exactly as they were spoken. Folk-Tales of Bengal (1883) is the result: one of the earliest and finest gatherings of Indian folklore, by turns eerie, funny, cruel, and wise.
The complete collection, all twenty-two tales, with Day's collector's preface and his forty-seven explanatory notes on Bengali words and customs, freshly set behind an original mixed media cover illustration by JVB Atelier Designs.
Details
- Lal Behari Day (1824–1892), collector and translator
- Subtitle: Twenty-Two Bengali Tales
- The complete 1883 collection, with the collector's preface and notes
- Northlume Classic Library
- Paperback and hardcover, 6 × 9, 198 pages