Taking up the lives of the Roy family – the father an itinerant priest, the mother the classic housewife, and their two children – in a Bengal village named Nischindipur and then in the city of Benaras, this multilayered novel is a superb depiction of the struggle of an entire generation of rural Indians, not just to survive but also to overcome the hardships imposed on them in order to find their true selves. Like Satyajit Ray's celebrated film that was based on it, the novel was its creator's first work – and, as a result, all the more astonishing for its maturity and depth. Along with Tarashankar and Manik, Bibhutibhushan was one of the three Bandyopadhyays whose works dominated the era in Bengali fiction that followed Rabindranath Tagore and Sarat Chandra Chattopdhyay. Pather Panchali: The Song of the Road Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay.

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