Distant Thunder

Amartya Sen has shown that the Great Bengal Famine of 1943, when millions of people died, was also an example of a `man-made famine', caused by the War time economy in India under the British Raj. Recent studies directly implicate Churchill, as referenced recently by Shashi Tharoor in an article (The Washington Post, March 10 2018). This famine forms the backdrop for the novel, a literary fiction, Ashani Sanket, written contemporaneously by the greatest portrayer of rural Bengal, Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay.Through the eyes of Ananga, her husband Gangacharan and their compatriots, the author has drawn with deep sympathy their daily lives in a remote village as they face with utter bewilderment the onset of the famine--the distant thunder. Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay is an iconic and beloved Bengali writer of the twentieth century. His novels Pather Panchali (`Song of the Road') and Aparajito (`The Unvanquished') were made into the famous `Apu Trilogy¿ by Satyajit Ray, another iconic movie director (Life-time Oscar, 1992). Ray also made a movie based on this novel Ashani Sanket (`Distant Thunder') which conquered the Golden Bear in Berlin Film Festival and is claimed by New York Timesas being one of the "1000 best movies ever made". The translator, Dr. Chhanda Chattopadhyay Bewtra is Emerita Professor at Creighton University, Omaha, Nebraska, Dr. Bewtra has published in both English and Bengali. Her other translations include novels by Nabaneeta Dev Sen and Sirshendu Mukhopadhyay--both winners of the Sahitya Akademi Award, given by the government of India.