Odia Books

Basanta Kumar Satpathy born in 1915,He is a contemporary writer, was born at Pandhada in Mayurbhanj district. After a long career of teaching English in various colleges, he retired as Head of the Department of English, Fakir Mohan College, Balasore.The works of Satpathy reveal a powerful influence of the prose style of the great master Fakir Mohan Senapati.

At once hilarious and witty, his stories reveal the ugly as well as the marvellous in life. Under a mask of humour, there is a soft and tragic undercurrent of exceptional beauty in his works. Satpathy is gifted with a rare insight into the suffering of fellow human beings and depicts it with commendable dexterity. Lik Fakir Mohan and R.K. Narayan, his characters, handpicked from his surroundings, are helpless pawns in the grip of adverse and humiliating situations

Satpathy’s pen does not spare anybody – not even his own self. He laughs his way through the odds of life the premature and tragic death of his wife, the rearing up of the motherless children, and a purposeless existence till late in life. He then discovered that he had the instinct of story-telling in him.

In fact, he emerged as a major writer of short story in the 70s after his first collection, Anti-romantic, was published.Earlier he had tried his hand at editing a literary periodical, Bhanja Pradeepa, for about twelve years. He had also translated Lamb’s Tales from Shakespeare (Lambnka Shakespeare kahani) and Rabindranath Tagore’s Raja. One of his early publications is a collection of one-act plays, Naba natika which is a translation of nine major one-act plays.

Satpathy has quite a few pieces of literary criticism also to his credit. He has also adapted some European stories and humorous essays in odia, but it is in his own stories that he shows the mark of originality. His language is racy and flexible and deliciously sprinkled with colloquial words of northern odisha. What is noteworthy is that his stories thrive on urbanity and a soft humane touch in dealing with the subject matter.

Some of his memorable stories are’Anti·romantic’, ‘Kani chian’, ‘Budhababu’, ‘Katha’, ‘Puapain jhia’ and‘Chaula’. His collections of stories and humorous essays include Anti-romantic, Hyderabadi angura,Manshashi mananka pain and Gotae alu. Born in a small hilly village and brought up in the midst of beautiful flora and fauna, his stories abound with animals, such as dogs, chics, vultures, cats and livestock.

On the model of Palgrave’s Golden Treasury, Satpathy has edited a collection of odia poems entitled
Sankalana. His autobiography named Mane pade has been serialised in a literary periodical Nabalipi.
Satpathy has said in his interviews that his creativity is a revolt against the diseased romantic spirit and the stilted style of the so-called experimentalists. ‘I write only what I know of’, Satpathy declares like Jane Austen, ‘and I have no other commitment than the one towards my own creative urge.’Satapathy had also edited Mayurbhanj Chronicle for some years.

Kani Chian
Budhababu
Katha
Puapain Jhia
Chaula
Hyderabadi Angura
Mane Pade