`Translated for the first time into English, Saratchandra's Srikanta was first published over seventy years ago and could perhaps be called the first modern Indian novel....

Through his dynamic and arresting characters, Saratchandra brings alive nineteenth-century Bengal, a prejudice-ridden society that needed to be radically changed. Srikanta set the precedent for socially conscious writing in modern Indian literature.'

(-- from the cover blurb)