Abandon
By Sangeeta Bandyopadhyay / Translated from bengali by Arunava Sinha
India has found its Ferrante — Niven Govinden
“And I struggle to find my place in this dark novel. I yearn for passion and despair – for that is what makes good literature – while Ishwari seeks a life of joy for herself and her son.”
Ishwari has run away from home, seeking to free herself from the shackles of society and devote her attentions to writing a novel… only to realise that her five year old son Roo has followed her. Ishwari and Roo wander the streets of Kolkata at night, until an elderly man takes pity on them and offers them an empty room in the guesthouse he manages. Ishwari gets work as a caregiver to the handsome gentleman who lives next door, while Roo spends all day locked up on the roof.
Pulsing with raw energy, Abandon gives voice to the perpetual conflict between the demands of life, particularly of motherhood, and those of art.
CONTRIBUTORS’ DETAILS
Sangeeta Bandyopadhyay is the author of Panty, Abandon and The Yogini. She has written nine novels and over fifty short stories since her controversial debut Shankini was first published in Bengali in 2006. Also a newspaper columnist and film critic, Sangeeta is based in Kolkata.
Arunava Sinha is the translator of Sangeeta Bandyopadhyay's Panty, Abandon and The Yogini. He has translated over thirty books from Bengali. Winner of the Crossword translation award, for both Sankar’s Chowringhee and Anita Agnihotri’s Seventeen, and of the Muse India translation award for Buddhadeva Bose’s When The Time Is Right, his translation of Chowringhee was also shortlisted for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize.
Praise
‘An arresting read that captures its protagonist’s conflict of identity: between being a mother and a writer.’ — Live Mint
‘Audacious... The need to create, Bandyopadhyay suggests, is something like a permanent wound—inextricable, smarting with pain, and only denied for so long.’ — Darren Huang, Words Without Borders
‘A long, raw, brutal, sometimes heartbreaking tug-of-war between motherhood and creativity… Abandon is a bold, important and formidable novel about the demands of life and the responsibilities we have, both to others and to ourselves.’ — Lucy Scholes, The National
‘With Room-like insight into motherhood, Abandon is a compelling novel about the perpetual conflict between art and life.’ — Rabeea Saleem, Book Riot
‘A novel that continues to explore many of the same conflicts that surround our notions of womanhood, motherhood and the accessibility of participation in the arts… Tragic and beguiling’ — Callum McAllister, Cardiff Review
‘A neat depiction of the ways in which our contradictory desires pull us in directions so different as to be irreconcilable.’ — The Skinny
‘Panty and Abandon are not simple, or light-hearted, or easily forgettable. They wound, they subvert, and they challenge – and that is their great triumph.’ — Helen Vassallo, Translating Women
‘Breathtaking and urgent; exploring women's desire and struggle for creative, economic, and sexual independent in Bandyopadhyay's characteristically sensual and engrossing prose, Abandon is an absolute joy.’ — Megan Bradbury, author of Everyone is Watching
‘In this beautiful novel, which subtly examines the rift that can open up inside us, compassion and cruelty are so close that at times they become indistinguishable. Prepare to be wrenched apart.’ — Rowan Hisayo Buchanan, author of Harmless Like You
More Information
Publication date: 6 October 2017
Format: B-format paperback (198mm × 127mm)
Extent: 230pp
ISBNs: 9781911284116 (print) / 9781911284109 (ebook)
Rights held: World excluding India
