Miscellaneous Essays by Biswanatha Kar

This translation arises from a simple but pressing question: Why read Biswanath Kar today? It has not been easy engaging with his nineteenth-century Odia prose. The translators attempted to highlight Kar's relevance to contemporary intellectual debates by making his work accessible to a wider readership. This work is an offering to the spirit of critical enquiry, dialogue between past and present, languages and cultures and between the multiple literary traditions that continue to shape the idea of India. About the Translators Zehara Jabeen is a translator, poet, and academic based in Odisha and serves as the Head of the Department of English at Christ College, Cuttack. She has translated significant Odia autobiographical texts into English, including Finding My Place in Fifty Years of Odisha (Godabarish Mishra), Autobiography of Baishnaba Pani, and From Kharasuan to Kulabiri. Manoranjan Behura, serving as the Head of the Department of English at Mahanga Puspagiri, Mahavidyalaya, Erakana, Cuttack, is a versatile man of letters. He enriches his academic career with his passion of storytelling, freelance journalism, and motivational speaking. His major works include the novel Pratinidhi, (2025), Literature on Screen: A Critical Study (2024) The Nonfiction of Amitav Ghosh: A Critical Study (2025) and the English translation Autobiography of Baisnaba Pani (2025) and Hunger (2023). As a bilingual writer both in English and his native Odia, he has produced a prolific collection of short stories that include Voka, (2020) Achinha Jha Pain Chhatatie, (2025) The Village Poet & Other Stories (2021) and his latest work Miscellaneous Essay (2026) are noteworthy. Behura is remarkable for his unique probing of the psyche of his characters that provide his readers an insiders' impression of their minds.