A part of the Classic Reissue series, An Unfinished Song is the English translation of Swarnakumari Debi Ghosal's novel Kahake, originally published in Bengali in 1898 and translated by the author herself. One of the earliest women's fictional texts in India to have been translated into English, An Unfinished Song represents interesting and important trends in Indian women's writing in the nineteenth century. The novel raises several important issues related to love, man-woman relationships, marriage, construction of female identity, impact of the West, East-West encounter, and nationalism.
The current edition includes a very perceptive and analytically rich introduction by Vijayasree Chaganti, as well as a note on the text, explanatory notes, glossary, and bibliography. The book will appeal to students and scholars of Indian writing in translation, those interested in Bengali life and literature of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, as well as general readers.