The Interloper

About the Book

THE FINAL BOOK IN THE AWARD-WINNING CHANDAL JIBON SERIES

After escaping a deadly bomb blast in the city's red-light area, Jibon returns to the Jadavpur railway station having lost his memory. He is instantly recognised by those who live in and around the station-squatters, rickshaw-drivers, beggars. liquor vendors, ragpickers. pickpockets-as the daring young man who rescued them many a time. However, Jibon has become a stranger to himself. He is simply playing the role of Jibon. His past, allegiant to the Naxalites, is marked by bloodshed.

He is in Calcutta of the mid-1970s, a time when the Stoneman prowls the streets after midnight, crushing the heads of homeless folk. This is the city where the rich refugees from East Pakistan have become even more affluent, and the poor ones way more deprived. Women are swindled and brutalised with alarming frequency here; orphans are kidnapped from public places. The influence of the ultra-reds has waned and the clout of the reds and the Congress party is on the rise.

Masterfully translated by V. Ramaswamy, The Interloper is an evocative finale to Manoranjan Byapari's spectacular autobiographical trilogy.

About the Author

Manoranjan Byapari writes in Bengali. Some of his important works include Chhera Chhera Jibon, Ittibrite Chandal Jibon and the Chandal Jibon trilogy. He taught himself to read and write at the age of twenty-four when he was in prison. He has worked as a rickshaw-puller, a sweeper and a porter. Until 2018, he was working as a cook at the Hellen Keller Institute for the Deaf and Blind in West Bengal.

About the Translator

V. Ramaswamy is a literary translator of voices from the margins. His previous translations include The Golden Gandhi Statue from America: Early Stories, Wild Animals Prohibited: Stories, Anti-stories and This Could Have Become Ramayan Chamar's Tale: Two Anti-Novels (shortlisted for the Crossword Book Award, 2019), all by the anti-establishment Bengali writer, Subimal Misra.