A stalwart among Bengali writers, Ashapurna Debi (1909-95) was one of those rare authors able to render the voice of an entire culture, to capture its nuances and most abiding traditions with startling precision and formidable insight. Each of the twenty-one stories in Matchbox,
carefully selected from Ashapurna Debi's extensive body of work and brilliantly translated from Bengali to retain the original flavour of the
language and Debi's style, highlights the tensions inherent in a society of close-knit and interdependent families. In 'Poddolota's Dream', a young
girl returns to the scene of a harrowing childhood, magnanimous and victorious for reasons quite her own; in 'Grieving for Oneself', a midnight
scare shows an ailing man precisely how he fits into the world he has worked his life to build; in 'Glass Beads Diamonds', a woman attends a
wedding reception at her estranged in-laws', bearing a gift that has cost her far too much. In other stories, a family rues an unexpected
disappearance of one of their own, two friends come to terms with a lost friendship, and a couple's relationship is interrupted by the sudden
appearance of an old flame. Written with singular insight, often shocking and always compelling, the stories in Matchbox reveal in brilliant sparks
the universal verities embedded within narrow domestic walls and present a literary genius at work.

About the Author

Ashapurna Debi (1909-95), the author of dozens of novels, short-story collections, and children's works, was one of the most significant Bengali writers of the twentieth century. Her best-known novels were the trilogy of Pratham Pratishruti, Subarnalata, and Bakulkatha, which spanned the period from the '20s to the '60s, and in which she led the way in tackling women's issues. In 1978 she received the Gyanpeeth Award and in 1994 she was chosen a Fellow of the Sahitya Akademi. Prasenjit Gupta is the author of A Brown Man and Other Stories, the children’s novel To the Blue King’s Castle, and a collection of stories translated from Hindi, Indian Errant: Short Stories by Nirmal Verma. A former Fulbright scholar, he writes fiction in English and translates fiction and poetry from Hindi and Bengali into English; he was the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship for translating the stories in Matchbox. Jhumpa Lahiri is the author of The Lowland and three previous works of fiction: Interpreter of Maladies, The Namesake, and Unaccustomed Earth. A recipient of the Pulitzer Prize, a PEN/Hemingway Award, the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award, and a Guggenheim Fellowship, she was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 2012.