“In this county, the seventeenth century coexists with the twentieth century; similarly, education, refinement, and generosity dwell alongside pettiness, selfishness and a total lack of civic sense.”
Bani Basu’s debut novel Janmabhoomi Mātribhoomi was originally published in 1987, in the Bengali periodical Anandalok’s Durga Poojo issue. It was brought as a book the next year. Debali Mookerjea-Leonard’s translation of the novel, titled The Continents Between, was published in 2024, with the publisher’s blurb introducing it as “reminiscent of Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Namesake”, which it is and isn’t.
Sudeep and Kamalika Mukherjee are two well-educated, well-off, fairly privileged Calcutta Bengalis living in the US in the 1980s. Their son, Swadesh, is an Indian, while their daughter, Aratrika, who was born in the US, is an American citizen. The children bred and brought up abroad are more Bengali than their counterparts in Calcutta – they speak the language, are culturally refined, and proud of their heritage. Neither has allowed their American friends to shorten their names or christen them with English nicknames. When Aratrika moves to Calcutta with her family, she’s appalled when her Bengali classmates insist on calling her Trixie and Trinca.
While Sudeep exists in a haze of permanent nostalgia for the city he has left behind, Kamalika is glad for her freedom....
