ISBN: 9780143420194    Publisher: Penguin Year of publishing: 2013     Format:  Paperback No of Pages: 1208        

This special omnibus edition brings together the three great historical novels Sunil Gangopadhyay wrote. The Bengal Renaissance forms the backdrop to the Sahitya Akademi Award-winning Those Days, in which a feudal aristocracy awakens to its social obligations. In its sequel First Light, a turn-of-the-century Bengal, led by Rabindranath Tagore and Swami Vivekananda, awakens to a new, modern sensibility. And in The Lonely Emperor, the story of Indias greatest professional stage actor Sisir Bhaduri, the past gives way to the present as the country gains independence.
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Born in 1934 in Faridpur, now in Bangladesh, Sunil Gangopadhyay came as a refugee to Calcutta in 1947, following the partition of India. The family suffered extreme poverty initially and Sunil, though only in his teens, was forced to find employment. He still managed to continue his education, taking his masters degree from Calcutta University. Sunil Gangopadhyay began his literary career as a poet, starting the epoch-making magazine, Krittibas, in 1953. Storming into the field of the novel with the trendsetting Atma Prakash (1966) a powerful portrayal of the frustration and ennui of the youth of Calcutta he soon rose to become the leading and most popular novelist in Bengali. Sei Somoy (1982), which won him the Sahitya Akademi Award, Purba Paschim (1989) and Prothom Alo (1996) are among his best novels. Aruna Chakravarti was the principal of Janki Devi Memorial College, University of Delhi, for ten years. Apart from Those Days and First Light, she has translated Saratchandras Srikanta for Penguin. Her original work includes the novels The Inheritors and Jorasanko. She is the recipient of the Vaitalik Award, the Sahitya Akademi Award and the Sarat Puraskar. Sreejata Guha is a translator of Bengali fiction, mostly published by Penguin Books. She has an MA in Comparative Literature from SUNY at Stony Brook, USA . At present she is a freelance editor and also teaches at Shibumi, a school in Bangalore.
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