One Dozen Stories (Paperback)

Summary Of The Book
One Dozen Stories is a collection of twelve short stories and includes stories such as Anath Babu’s Terror in which a ghost hunter visits a haunted house and The Hungry Septopus, in which a carnivorous plant with an insatiable appetite wreaks havoc. As part of the dozen are two stories featuring one of Ray’s most popular characters, the private detective Feluda, who went on to appear in thirty-five stories along with his sidekicks, Topshe and Lalmohan Ganguly.

Bonku Babu’s Friend, written by Ray in 1962 and published in the Bengali family magazine Sandesh, also finds a place in this collection. In this story, a schoolteacher encounters a friendly and possibly juvenile alien from outer space, invested with special powers, and capable of communicating with children. Several science fiction films have been inspired by this story including Steven Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) and E.T. the Extraterrestrial (1982), and Rakesh Roshan’s Koi... Mil Gaya (2003). The story was also adapted into a Bengali television film by Ray’s son Sandip Ray and Kaushik Basu in 2006.

Published originally in Bengali as Ek Dojon Goppo in 1970, this collection of twelve short stories was the first in a series of short stories written by filmmaker Satyajit Ray. One Dozen Stories is the English translation of the original Bengali book and has been translated by Gopa Majumdar. The book is introduced by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni.

About The Authors
Satyajit Ray was an acclaimed Bengali film director and author from India.
Satyajit Ray was born in Calcutta, West Bengal, into a prominent Bengali family and started his career as a commercial artist for the British advertising agency D.J. Keymer in 1943. He was drawn into independent filmmaking after meeting and assisting French filmmaker Jean Renoir in the set of his film The River. Ray directed thirty-seven films, including feature films, documentaries, and short films. He received many awards during his career, including thirty-two (Indian) National Film Awards, and a number of awards at international film festivals including the Cannes, Berlin, and Venice. He won an Honorary Award for Lifetime Achievement at the 1992 Academy Awards (The Oscars). The Government of India has awarded Ray the Padma Shri (1958), Padma Bhushan (1965), Padma Vibhushan (1976), and Bharat Ratna (1992). Ray died in Calcutta in 1992 at the age of 70 but not before inspiring a slew of filmmakers and writers including Wes Anderson, Adoor Gopalakrishnan, Salman Rushdie, J.M. Coetzee, and Danny Boyle. Although Satyajit Ray is considered a master filmmaker, he was also a prolific writer and calligrapher. His stories were initially published in Bengali and had a wide fanbase in the 1960s and 70s. With their recent translation into English, his stories are finding a new audience.
Gopa Majumdar translates Bengali fiction into English having translated the works of writers like Bibhutibhushan Bandopadyay, Ashapurna Debi, Nabaneeta Dev Sen, and Satyajit Ray.
Her translations include, Taslima Nasrin’s My Girlhood: An Autobiography.