Kolkata Culture - Literature

Literature

Bengali prose became modern courtesy of Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar. The doyens of nineteenth century Bengali literature like Rabindranath Tagore, Michael Madhusudan Dutt, Kazi Nazrul Islam were from Kolkata. As the then cultural capital of India, Kolkata based literature affected and shaped the thought and culture of many Indians. Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay was an author whose specialty was exploring complex human psychology, especially that of female mind. Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay was one of the earliest Bengali novelists and is popularly known as the author of India's first national song, "Bande Mātarom" (pronounced in Hindi "Vande Mātāram"). Tarashankar Bandopadhyay was another famous novelist whose works feature a realistic picture of the many-colored fabric of life in rural Bengal. The Kolkata littérateurs still borrow a lot from Tagore. In the 1940s, 1950s and 1950s, a new breed of Bengali writers and poets came into being in Kolkata exemplified by Jibanananda Das, Sukanta Bhattacharya, Bishnu Dey, Premendra Mitra, Buddhadeb Guha etc. They wanted to break free from the traditional mysticism and surrealism of Tagore style and present various concepts such as modernism, post-modernism, cubism through their writings. Satyajit Ray was also a writer, especially for children. Other literary figures include Sunil Gangopadhyay, Shirshendu Mukhopadhyay, Manik Bandopadhyay, Samaresh Majumdar, Sharadindu Bandyopadhyay, Shankha Ghosh, Amitav Ghosh, Nirad Chaudhuri, Shakti Chattopadhyay, Mahasweta Devi, Joy Goswami, Mani Shankar Mukherjee, etc.

The most important counter-cultural activity in post-Independence West Bengal has been the Hungryalist Movement, known also as Hungry Generation spearheaded by the two outsider brothers Samir Roychoudhury and Malay Roy Choudhury, who are today cultural cult-figures among Bengali Intellectual diaspora.

Kolkata's proud presentation of the new forms of Prakalpana fiction and Sarbangin poetry, contrived by Vattacharja Chandan and projected by Prakalpana Movement, appears to be the only ongoing Indian avant garde literary movement that has been buzzing globally for over four decades.

The Calcutta Book Fair is an annual fair showcasing books published by the regional, national and international publishers. Started in 1976, the book fair projects every year a particular country as the theme of the year. There is a separate area dedicated for the little magazines.