Maligned Maverick: Michael Madhusudan Datta – Life, Letters and Literature
Author: Nandan Dasgupta
Publisher: Primus Books
Pages: 400
Price: Rs 1,750
More than 150 years after his death in 1873, Michael Madhusudan Datta continues to occupy a unique place in Bangla literature. Not just because he pioneered the use of blank verse and introduced sonnets in Bangla poetry, but also for daring to reinterpret the key characters of the Ramayana in a new epic that he produced at a time when Bengal was going through the churns of an intellectual, social and cultural renaissance.
And all this from a man who was a rebel of sorts,