Bengal the Beautiful

In these poems infused with a scent of unrequited love, the great Bengali poet Jibanananda Das captured his country’s soul through evocations of village life and natural beauty. Written in 1934, the sixty-two sonnets - discovered in an exercise-book twenty years after Das wrote them - achieved instant popularity on their posthumous publication in 1957, becoming a totemic symbol of freedom in Bangladesh’s 1971 War of Independence. This is the first English version of the complete collection, which was given its title Rupasi Bangla by the poet’s brother who edited it for publication.