রূপকথা সমগ্র

by Nabaneeta Dev Sen

A collection of 61 fairy tales, written for today's children but retaining the traditional flavour of love and wonder.

346 pages, Hardcover

First published November 1, 213

About the author

Nabaneeta Dev Sen is an award-winning Indian poet, novelist and academic. Sen has published more than 80 books in Bengali: poetry, novels, short stories, plays, literary criticism, personal essays, travelogues, humour writing, translations and children’s literature. Her short stories and travelogues are a rare combination of fine humour, deep human concern, and high intellect, which has made her a unique figure in the Bangla literary scene.

She is a well-known children's author in Bengali for her fairy tales and adventure stories, with girls as protagonist. She has also written prize-winning one-act plays.

Reviews

[Sutapa Bhattacharya · Rating 3 out of 5]

The book contains 61 stories. Most, if not all of them are enjoyable. The stories are refreshing in that they do not have stereotypical fairy-tale characters like the knight in the shining armour and the damsel in distress. The characters are quite human with their virtues and flaws. Women are actually portrayed as strong and intelligent central characters, and not as mere props in stories of men. However, plot-wise the stories are not out-of-the-box. Also, though one is supposed to willingly suspend their disbelief while reading fantasy, one can perhaps expect an author of Debsen's stature to have logical (Not real-life logical. Fairy-tale logical is what I mean, if that makes any sense.) plots and not resorting to deus ex machina.

I have always liked Nabaneeta Debsen's writing style. This book is no different. Keeping aside the too-simplistic story-lines and a bit of preaching (which, I must admit, is an important agenda of children's fairy tales), the book is quite enjoyable as a light read.