In this highly acclaimed book, Clinton B. Seely examines the life of Jibanananda Das, arguably the most influential poet in Bengal after Rabindranath, and explores this Bengali poet's artistic development and the literary world in which he wrote. Through chapters titled respectively as "Roots", "The Kallol Era", "Back to Barisal", "The War Years: Prelude and Aftermath", "Another Fling at Fiction", "The Poetry of Politics", and "Posthumous Jibanananda", and with numerous translations of Jibanananda's poems, the reader will get a vivid picture of this remarkable personality and the Bengali literary world.