Andhar bil (forthcoming)

by Kalyani Thakur charal / translated from bengali by asit biswas

From Kalyani Thakur Charal, one of India’s most vital voices for Dalit women, comes this evocative novel about displacement, resilience, and rebuilding.

In 1947 and again in 1971, entire communities in the South Asian subcontinent crossed newly drawn borders, seeking refuge as partitions divided and reshaped nations. Kalyani Thakur’s evocative novel tells the story of her people, Dalits of the Matua sect, who settled around Andhar Bil, a local water body, in a newly formed country. This new bil, a reflection of the one they left behind, becomes a place where refugees slowly and painfully rebuild their lives.

Children play in and around the bil, the novel’s central character, while people fish and cook in ways that evoke the flavours of home. Festivals and boat races unfold, jute is harvested and sold, floods push people to higher ground, and marriages are arranged amidst property disputes. The still waters of the bil hold these stories, with the boroi tree standing in the centre, a silent witness to it all.

At the heart of this episodic, loosely woven narrative is the story of Kamalini, a young girl who will one day leave her beloved Andhar Bil for the city – just as her parents’ generation left their villages and their cherished bil for a new land.

Praise

for I Belong to Nowhere

‘Charal’s writing is militant, satirical, and biting.’ —Modern Poetry in Translation

Contributors’ details

Kalyani Thakur Charal is a Dalit feminist poet writing in the Bengali language. She has published five volumes of poetry, including I Belong to Nowhere and Poems of Chandalini, two collections of critical essays, a collection of short stories, and an autobiography. She edits the Dalit women’s magazine Neer Writupatra, is on the board of Dalit Sahitya Akademi, and a publishing house focusing solely on Dalit writers. She recently edited Dalit Lekhika: Women’s Writing from Bengal.

Asit Biswas is an associate professor of English in West Bengal Education Service, and is currently posted at Dr APJ Abdul Kalam Government College, New Town, Kolkata. He completed his PhD on adaptation of western texts in Bengali films, from the University of Gour Banga, Malda, West Bengal. He has published fourteen research papers, six short stories, two plays and some poems in Bengali. He is the co-editor of the book, Shotoborsher Bangla Dalit Sahitya (2019); Dalit Poems, Songs and Dialogues from Bengal in English Translation (2019, a translation of Manohar Mouli Biswas’s book, Dalit Sahityer Digboloy) and Dalit Literary Horizon (2019). He also published Pardon Not: Marichjhampi Massacre (2019), a translation of the novel, Kshama Nei by Nakul Mallik.

more information

• Publication date: 7 October 2025 (UK & US)

• Extent: 128pp

• Format: B-format paperback (198mm × 129mm)

• Rights held: WEL excl. Indian Subcontinent

• ISBNs: 978-1-917126-17-5 (paperback) / 978-1-917126-18-2 (ebook)

• Price: £14.99 | $16.95 US (paperback) / £7.99 (ebook)