Prodosh Bhattacharya

Introduction

This article explores how two works of Bengali adolescent and young adult literature by the same author, Hemendra Kumar Roy (1888–1963), each references, in a different way, two different works of British popular fiction, subverting one and creatively reworking the other.

The Hound of the Baskervilles (1901-2) and Amabasyar Raat (‘New-Moon Nights’, serialized 1933, book 1939)

  ‘New-Moon Nights’ begins with a newspaper report of strange occurrences in the large village/small town of Manaspur near the tiger-infested mangrove region called the Sunderbans in pre-independence, and therefore pre-partition, Bengal. On each of the previous new-moon nights, a woman, invariably one wearing expensive jewellery, has disappeared. Till these disappearances began, Manaspur, despite being near the Sunderbans, had not been plagued by tigers. However, precisely at the stroke of midnight on each night of disappearance, [আরো পড়ুন]