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A hilarious and absurdist take on the political landscape of West Bengal, India. Beggar's Bedlam is a surreal novel that unleashes the chaos of the carnival on the familiar. Part literary descendent of Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita and part a reconstruction of lost Bengali history, Nabarun Bhattacharya's masterpiece is a jubilant, fizzing wire of subaltern anarchy and insurrection. Marshall Bhodi Sarkar and his lieutenant Sarkhel surreptitiously dig on the banks of the Ganges River looking for crude oil reserves. Instead, they unearth curved daggers, rusty broadswords, and a Portuguese cannon. Bhodi is an occasional military man and the lead sorcerer of the secret black-magic sect named Choktar. He joins forces with the flying Flaperoos-men with a predilection for alcohol and petty vandalism-to declare outright war against the Marxist-Leninist West Bengal government. In a bloodless revolution that is fascinating in its utter implausibility, a motley crew of yet more implausible characters come together in a magic-realist fictional remapping of Calcutta.
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Nabarun Bhattacharya (1948-2014) was a prominent Bengali writer who enjoyed cult following in his lifetime and beyond. A journalist from 1973 to 1991 at a foreign news agency, he gave up that career to become a full-time writer. Novelist and short-story writer, he was also a prolific poet.
Rijula Das is a novelist and translator. Her work has been translated into French, Russian and German.
