Nabanjur

Translated for the first time from the Bengali, this astonishingly radical novel is about Chhobi, a gusty, misfit girl from a rural land-owning family, who questions injustice, fights to share the privileges offered to her brother and male cousins, and refuses to see her future as another submissive household drudge. ''Nabankur'' means a new seedling, personified by Chhobi, who is growing up in the 1930s and early 1940s in Bengal where anti-colonial struggles against British rule are in full swing. Side by side her political awakening gives rise to thoughts of personal freedom. Moving from the darkness of the interior to light is a recurrent theme in the novel, and Chhobi awakens her selfhood, just as a seedling strains towards the sun.