Prasenjit Gupta
Writer • Translator
Works
A Brown Man and Other Stories (short fiction)
Indian Errant (Hindi short stories by Nirmal Verma in translation)
Matchbox (Bengali short stories by Ashapurna Debi in translation)
To the Blue King’s Castle (for the child in all of us)
Prasenjit Gupta
writes fiction in English and translates fiction and poetry from Bengali and Hindi into English. His work has won awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, the University of Iowa, and the American Institute of Indian Studies. He is a former Fulbright scholar and a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop.
“I find extremely striking and emotionally rich the stories in Prasenjit Gupta’s book A Brown Man. . . . Through some mysterious prestidigitation, Gupta manages to fill the few pages of a short story with the depth of novels. . . . Highest recommendation.” — Rick Harsch, author of the Driftless Zone trilogy
“To the subjects of exile, loss, and displacement, Nirmal Verma brings a uniquely tender sensibility as well as a vision that is profoundly informed by the specificities of a wider historical experience. . . . This is a major new collection from one of the contemporary world’s finest writers.” — Amitav Ghosh
“Ashapurna Debi (1909-95) was one of those rare authors able to render the voice of an entire culture, to capture its nuances and most abiding traditions with startling precision and formidable insight. Translated by Prasenjit Gupta and introduced by Jhumpa Lahiri, Matchbox is an anthology of twenty-one stories by Ashapurna Debi. Each of these stories has been carefully selected from her extensive body of work and brilliantly translated from Bengali to retain the original flavour of the language and Debi’s style, highlighting the tensions inherent in a society of close-knit and inter-dependent families. The stories are written with singular insight, often shocking and always compelling.” — The Statesman
“Ritu goes shopping to an ordinary mall and stumbles upon the most extraordinary adventure! She . . . finds herself in a forest where she meets the resident magician and his assistant Blanc-Noir. What happens thereafter is a magic maze of adventure and thrill. Prasenjit Gupta’s first book for children, which starts with Ritu’s mother pestering her to clean her room, takes a turn where anything is possible. For more twists in the tale, get reading!” — The Telegraph
Sample translations and writing
Translation of a poem by Sukumar Ray (from Bengali)
Translation of a short story by Nirmal Verma (from Hindi)
Translation of a short story by Rabindranath Tagore (from Bengali)
Available for purchase:
A Brown Man and Other Stories (India: from Amazon; U.S.: from Parabaas)
Indian Errant (India: from Indialog; U.S.: from Parabaas)
Matchbox (India: from Amazon; U.S.: from Parabaas)
To the Blue King’s Castle (India: from Flipkart; U.S.: from Parabaas)
