Details

Format: Paperback
ISBN: 9782915255522
Collection: Hors Collection
13.5 x 21.5 cm
Weight: 397 gr
Pages: 328
First publication: 26/09/2006
Last printing: 09/2006
CLIL: 3444
BISAC: LCO004000

Read an excerpt

La Descente du Gange

Gangavataran

Translation: France Bhattacharya

Preface : Charles Malamoud

A group of men and a woman, in front of a village assembly, obstinately, tirelessly, return to the terrible circumstances of their pilgrimage to the sources of the Ganges and try to find explanations for the cataclysm which terrified them. With them, like them, we are called to seek, under the leadership of Lokenath Bhattacharya, the real reasons for the collapse which threatens our earth and what could be our responsibility in this imminent chaos. Will there be disappearance? Yes, without a doubt, but will this disappearance be irretrievable? This is where the great myths of India come in to make us accept the inevitability of our end and show it to us as a necessary moment in a cycle where regeneration succeeds destruction. "After the flood will awaken one day again the forest of ascetics, the banyan trees and the majestic fig trees, the atmosphere filled with the solar breath." Philosophical narrative translated from Bengali.

Paper book
buy
€24.00
Epub
buy
€9.90

PRESS REVIEW

When the Ganges takes revenge
"... The story is structured like a play in which the playmaker is the author himself, who intervenes, organizes, comments ..."

(Le Monde, 23/03/2007)
Download the article

CONTRIBUTORS' BIOGRAPHIES

Lokenath Bhattacharya

Lokenath Bhattacharya (1927-2001) is an Indian poet from Bengal. After studying at Vishva Bharati, the university founded by Rabindranath Tagore, then in Calcutta, he studied in Paris. Author of around thirty books in India, he has also translated French poets, such as Arthur Rimbaud, Henri Michaux, to whom he will be closely linked, Michaux opening the doors to several French publishers. Living in Paris, he married France Bhattacharya, who, after a 22-year stay in India, taught Bengal language, literature and culture at Inalco.

Charles Malamoud

Charles Malamoud (born in 1929 in Moldavia) is a French religious historian, orientalist and Indianist. Arrived in France in 1937, he studied Classics and Russian at the Sorbonne from 1951 to 1954. He trained in Sanskrit and Indian Studies at the Sorbonne and at the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes (EPHE). From 1964 he regularly visited India. Member of the Linguistic Society of Paris and of the Asian Society since 1956 as well as of the Center for Indian Studies almost since its foundation, he defended his thesis in 1979 at the University of the Sorbonne Nouvelle-Paris 3. He is director honorary studies of religions of India at EPHE.

France Bhattacharya

France Bhattacharya, wife of the poet Lokenath Bhattacharya deceased in 2001, lived 22 years in India. Professor emeritus of universities, she taught the language, as well as pre-colonial literature and culture of Bengal at Inalco until her retirement in 2001. She has published several translations of ancient and modern Bengali authors in French and works educational. She has notably translated some short stories by the poet Tagore as well as three novels published by Zulma: "Quatre chapters" (2005), "Charulata" (2009) and "Kumudini" (2013). He was awarded an Honoris causa doctorate by Rabindra Bharati University in Calcutta and the Saiyed Waliullah Prize by the Bangladesh Academy.