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ISBN 978-0-9826246-1-6
A modern-day Bengali Decameron, My Kind of Girl is a sensitive and vibrant novella containing four disarming accounts of unrequited love. In a railway station one bleak December night, four strangers from different walks of life - a contractor, a government bureaucrat, a writer, and a doctor - face an overnight delay. The sight of a young loving couple prompts them to reflect on and share with each other their own experiences of the vagaries of the human heart in a story cycle that is in turn melancholy, playful, wise, and heart-wrenching. The tales reveal each traveler's inner landscape and provide an illuminating glimpse into contemporary life in India. Coming out of a great storytelling tradition, My Kind of Girl is a moving and imaginative look at love from one of India's most celebrated writers.
That My Kind of Girl - a classic modernist tale of four passengers stranded in a railway-station waiting room at night, recounting stories of lost loves - is engrossing is thanks not only to Sinha's abilities, but to the quality of Bose's narrative, which, unlike his earlier, Calcutta-based masterpiece, Tithidore (1949), inhabits a lighter, more Maupassant-like manner instead.
"—Rosinka Chaudhari
. . . Bose's charming and chatty prose provides us with tales as entertaining as either of those of its predecessors. . . . My Kind of Girl . . . is another fine addition to Archipelago's growing impressive list of world literature.
"—Rain Taxi
It's just got the right feel . . . . At once innocent and overwhelmingly passionate, in the manner of first love . . . A novel of delicate ideas and nuances. To capture them with the right touch of lightness couldn't have been easy, yet Sinha does just that.
"—Mint (a partner publication of The Wall Street Journal)
The picture of Bengali society . . . [in] the mid-1920s and the Second World War. . . . Charming. . . . Quite appealing.
"—M. A. Orthofer, The Complete Review
Masterful. . . . Superbly translated . . . Bose's remarkable talent of throwing his characters' voices and at the same time inhabiting their skin is on full display in this slim, moving book.
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—Hindustan Times
I couldn't let it go till I'd finished. . . . Beautifully written . . . as alive today as it was back when it was written. . . . The translation is nuanced. . . . This is a book you have to read. And now--while love is still in the air.
"—www.trendy.in
It's a shame, really, that non-Bengali readers have little access to the writings of Buddhadeva Bose, one of the greatest poets, essayists and writers in the post-Tagore era . . . Delightful. . . . [With] perfect pitch. . . . Sinha's beautifully nuanced translation makes it unputdownable.
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—The Financial Express
Wonderfully decadent. . . . [Written] with consummate mastery. . . . A gem of delight. . . . Bose stokes the embers of the story alive till the last page.
"—Indian Express
A magical and totally entertaining volume--Sinha has cought Bose's dynamic and unfetted style admirably.
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—India Today
Charming . . . Riveting . . . Rich and strange . . . The design is familiar, going back to the great European story-cycles of Boccaccio and Chaucer, but sharpened by that extra edge of sophistication Bose invariably managed to bring into his best work . . . A novel of ideas, a veritable history of emotions that alludes to some of the most profound testimonies of love in world literature.
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—The Telegraph