Samaresh Basu

Samaresh Basu Biography

Samaresh Basu was a prominent Bengali writer who lived in the 20^th century. For his novel Shamba – he received the 1980 Sahitya Akademi Award in Bengali. Samresh Basu won the Filmfare Award for Best Story for the Bollywood film – Namkeen in 1982. Fever: Mahakaler Rather Ghoda is his Bengali classic. He was a revolutionary from Bengal who has been shifted from one jail to another. Though he has been a revolutionary in the late 1940s, his prison life transformed him to a great writer of the post-independence period.

He was born on 11th December 1924. Since childhood Brata-kathas of fantasy folk stories recited by his mother left great impressions on his child’s mind. He spent his teens in Naihati, a suburb of Kolkata and has done odd jobs. He worked in an ordnance factory in Ichhapore during the period 1943-1949. In those days he became an active member of trade union and communist party, for which he got arrested and jailed in 1949. It was during his stay in jail when he published his first novel, Uttaranga. It has been seven years since his imprisonment and has been shifted from one jail to another. He has earlier written an unpublished novel - Nayanpurer Mati at the age of 21. It was serialized in Parichay in 1946 and never published as a book.

Soon after his release from jail, he started his professional career as a writer and never returned to his factory life as a worker. Later in a literal career spanning to about 40 years since release from prison, he published 200 short stories and 100 novels – really an outstanding work. A major figure of Bengali fiction, he also used pennames - "Kalkut" and "Bhramar". On charges of obscenity, two of his novels got banned for a brief period. Samaresh Basu died on 12 March 1988.

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Updated: January 04, 2016