Sign-In
Cart
Bangarwadi {A Timeless Indian Novella}
Paperback
General FictionLiterary Fiction
ISBN13: 9789363363670
Publisher: Speaking Tiger Books
Published: Mar 12 2026
Pages: 184
Weight: 0.41
Height: 0.42 Width: 5.06 Depth: 7.81
Language: English
At the edge of a parched upland, Bangarwadi lies almost empty-its shepherds gone with their flocks, its school forsaken to dust and birds. To take charge of this neglected school and unforgiving landscape arrives a young schoolteacher, uncertain of his place and unsure whether learning and education has any meaning in this community at all.
Through his gradual immersion in village life, Vyankatesh Madgulkar offers a deeply attentive portrait of a community shaped by toil, hunger, and inherited rhythms of survival. The story unfolds through small, intimate encounters-under an ancient neem tree, in a bare classroom, during night-time gatherings lit only by an oil lamp-revealing the moral codes, affections, cruelties, and quiet solidarities that hold the village together. The shepherds' world, resistant to authority yet governed by its own order, emerges with remarkable clarity and restraint.
First published in Marathi in 1955, Bangarwadi is regarded as a landmark in post-independence Marathi literature. It is an unsentimental yet deeply compassionate portrait of rural India that examines education not as an abstract ideal but as a fragile, negotiated presence in lives shaped by necessity. This lucid translation by Shanta Gokhale brings Madgulkar's classic to contemporary readers, preserving its austere beauty and its enduring meditation on belonging, responsibility, and the slow work of trust.
Also from
Madgulkar, Vyankatesh
Also in
Literary Fiction
Elizabeth Spencer: Novels & Stories (Loa #344): The Voice at the Back Door / The Light in the Piazza / Knights and Dragons / Stories
Spencer, Elizabeth
Hardcover
James Fenimore Cooper: The Leatherstocking Tales Vol. 1 (Loa #26): The Pioneers / The Last of the Mohicans / The Prairie
Cooper, James Fenimore
Hardcover
The Underworld U.S.A. Trilogy, Volume I: American Tabloid, the Cold Six Thousand; Introduction by Thomas Mallon
Ellroy, James
Hardcover
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Other Stories (Barnes & Noble Classics Series)
Stevenson, Robert Louis
Paperback
Philip Roth: Novels 1973-1977 (Loa #165): The Great American Novel / My Life as a Man / The Professor of Desire
Roth, Philip
Hardcover
The Patrick Melrose Novels: Never Mind, Bad News, Some Hope, and Mother's Milk
St Aubyn, Edward
Paperback