Manisha Granthalaya, a little book haven in Kolkata, which debuted in 1964, keeps the Russian spirit alive in India.
Table of ContentsSoviet books conquer BengalBehind the scenes of the literary boomThe new beginning
A bookstore in Kolkata that appears empty from the outside preserves time on its shelves. Each corner of the Manisha Granthalaya, which is located near College Street, is nostalgically decorated with the covers of Soviet-era books that are no longer in any particular sequence. Along with fiction, there are books about politics, medicine, and engineering. Although most are translations into Bengali, some are in Russian.
The volumes continue to serve as a memory of a time when West Bengal in eastern India had a reading culture that included Russian literature, especially in translation. Children were raised with stories about witches, mystical forests, and people trudging through the winter. And when they grew older, literary greats like Maxim Gorky, Nikolai ...