DUKHE KEORA 

Ramkumar Mukhopadhyay 

translation : Navamalati Neog Chakraborty

"With a natural flair, Ramkumar has in his writings written stories from the lips of the people around him about their day to day lives, gave shape to the tales from the Shastras, created fiction all his own, penned stories of village life and myths, of rumours that unwind in people's gossiping ways, and thereby created a warm weave of a narration. They are there in his writing with a neat absorbing precision".--Debes Roy, Sahitya Akademi award winning novelist

"From the people who are there around him in his day to day life, Ramkumar finds features for his pen to record. He makes life speak. In it we find such stark humourous contrasts, as well as a smile that lingers but leaves him detached. The smile is a lot akin to that fixed smile which brims for thousands of years on the lips of the Sun God at Konarak!"---Shyamal Gangopadhyay, Sahitya Akademi award winning novelist

There has been no novel like 'Dukhe Keora' in Bengali literature earlier. Dukhe, the main and only character in the novel, was earlier an agricultural labourer and now sells country liquor distilled by his wife. He speaks on different subjects like labour, women, culture, politics, war, death etc which are the basic components in our life and literature. The questions come from 'you', who is the author cum reader and also a representative of the civil society. The genre of novel is breaking its own bounds in the 21st century. By any stretch of imagination it may be held that in parallel focus, Dukhe Keora zooms off with its depth and native excellence, relating to such novels of a new genre. It's a thinking novel, one that is focused and determined by its rationale.

Ramkumar Mukhopadhyay is the author of nine novels, ten collections of short stories, two travelogues and three books of essays. His books have been translated into English, Hindi, Odia, Malayalam, Tamil, Rajasthani and other languages. He has received the Bankimchandra Smriti Puraskar of the Government of West Bengal for his novel Dukhe Keora. He has also received the Somen Chanda award of the West Bengal Bangla Academy, Ananda Puraskar, Katha sward, Bharatiya Bhasha Parishad award, Kusumanjali award and Gajendra Kumar Mitra Smriti Puroshkar.

With writing as her passion, Navamalati Neog Chakraborty, an academe from a scholarly household of Assam has taken translation with its abysmal promises and possibilities to bring works of one language to another. A bilingual translator she is selective about the books she translates. Be it the memoirs of Bezbaroa, Nabin Chandra Bordoloi or Dr Neog: or novels like Dukhe Keora, Birasan, Yatra, Chanakya, Xotoghni, etc. Verse translation is her forte. Her books are published by Sahitya Akademi, Niyogi Books, Assam Sahitya Sabha, Notion Press and others