Freedom's Ransom

Prafulla Roy was born in 1934 in a village in Dhaka district, now in Bangladesh. He started writing at the age of nineteen. The Partition of India in 1947 provided one of the major themes in his writing, the other being rural poverty, and most of his writings in this area emanate out of Roy's experience of life in the economically backward state of Bihar. His work has influenced filmmakers, particularly such major artists as Buddhadeb Dasgupta, Tapan Sinha, Biplab Ray Chaudhary and Sandeep Ray. Many of the films based on Roy's stories have been made in languages other than Bengali, and several of his writings have now been translated into other Indian languages. Dr John W. Hood is an Australian writer who has spent most of his life studying Indian culture, now divides his time between Melbourne and Kolkata. His translations from the Bengali include Niharranjan Ray's classic, History of the Bengali People, poems of Buddhadeb Dasgupta (Love and Other Forms of Death), and novels and short stories of the Partition and Beyond and In the Shadow of the Sun, as well as Buddhadeb Guha's Fanfare for a Tiger and The Bounty of the Goddess. He has also written extensively on serious Indian cinema. His work includes books on Mrinal Sen, Buddhadeb Dasgupta and Satyajit Ray, as well as The Essential Mystery: Major Filmmakers of Indian Art Cinema.