His early life in the intimate natural setting of Barisal and Silchar, the great Bengal famine of 1943, the violent legacy of Partition, and above all his experience of service in the armed forces went to the making of Manindra Gupta(1926-2018), one of the major architects of Bangla poetry in the post-Jibanananda era. He assimilated all that was best in his predecessors and carved out a style all his own. Dispensing with the conventional lyric mode marked by effusion, Gupta brought his intensive reading of world literature, critical thinking, and unsentimental worldview to bear on his unique style of presentation that is manifest in the deft employment of the occult and the absurd. This book offers an interpretation of Gupta's life, his texts and times.

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