Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay

Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay was born in Ghoshpara-Muratipur village in Bengal on 12 September 1894. His ancestral home was in Barakpur (formerly in Jessore District) on the banks of River Ichhamati. Bibhutibhushan spent his time writing and travelling intensively, particularly in the forests of Bihar, participating in literary meets and conferences, until his sudden death in Ghatshila on 1 November 1950. Besides numerous unpublished manuscripts, his oeuvre comprises seventeen novels, seven diaries-travelogues and over two hundred short stories. He was posthumously awarded the Rabindra Puruskar in 1951 for Ichhamati, his last published novel. Rimli Bhattacharya has studied comparative literature and works on performance history and the arts, besides literature. Her translations from Bengali to English include the autobiographies of Binodini Dasi My Story & My Life as an Actress (1998), Rabindranath Tagore’s Four Chapters (Char Addhyay) (2002). She has translated two other novels of Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay, Aranyak: Of the Forest (2002) and Making a Mango Whistle (Aam anthir Bhepu) (2007).