Scarlet Dragonflies and other stories from the Sunderbans

Tales from the heart of Sunderbans, where nature is keeping count.

Man and beast come together, rage together in the undulating staccato of Amrita Nilanjana’s ambitious collection of short stories from Sundarbans and beyond. The shimmering waves of the Ganges, pungent tiger musk too close for comfort, the menacing,
oppressive silence of the Sundarbans, its terrifying beauty and the valiant perseveration of the people who inhabit it—make up the diegetic universe of this land. The velocity of being meets new limits in her prose, each detail only proving the accumulated gnosis
of a well-examined life—Amrita Nilanjana’s is a formidable talent to look out for. This volumes explores the primal instincts shared by man and beast, vividly capturing the haunting beauty and danger of  the Sundarbans. Prose rich with lyrical detail and emotional insight, merging narrative with existential questions of survival and ecological fragility because of human exploitation. Masterful blend of magic realism, folkloric traditions, and gritty reality of leading a life in Sunderbans, with special focus on the domestic lives of women and those who can rebel against tradition.