Yatra: An Unfinished Novel

A mysterious letter arrives at the doorstep of an aging writer and swiftly begins to permeate everything he sees and touches. When he sets out on a journey to excavate the truth—and its alibis— his confrontation leads him deep into the human psyche and the turbulent ways of the civilised. Playing with the notions of ‘shadowland’ and ‘heartland’, the stories of the narrator and his compatriots (nursing their own agendas) are cross-stitched with their anxious traversing of inner and outer worlds, interrogating the role of the reader and the writer and the degree of participation (or passivity) allowed to them. A deeply psychological tale of binaries, Deka’s ‘unfinished’ novel refuses the promise of easy answers. Yatra leaves one with the thought that perhaps our travels never really end—when one journey ends we find ourselves at the beginning of another. About the author:Harekrishna Deka (b. 1943) is one of Assam’s bestknown contemporary writers. He has won the Sahitya Akademi Award in 1987, and Katha Award in 1995. An IPS officer, he retired as the Director General of Police, Assam. Post-retirement, he served as the editor of the English daily, The Sentinel, before taking up the editorship of the prestigious Assamese literary monthly, Gariyasi. He has also written four volumes of literary criticism and a couple of books on social criticism. About the Translator: Navamalati Neog Chakraborty is a Kolkata-based poet, critic, translator, short-story writer and artist. She taught English Literature in Assam and Nagaland, and was also a Visiting Professor in the Department of Comparative Studies, Calcutta University, for 11 years. She has created her own niche as a reputed poet with 10 anthologies and a number of translated works. Read more