Author
Jayanta Dey
Jayanta Dey
Jayanta Dey was born on February 29, 1964. He is a journalist by profession and currently the editor of a Bengali weekly magazine. He was most recently awarded the Bankim Puraskar in 2023, the highest literary award presented by the Government of West Bengal, for his novel “Annapurna.”
Translator
Sayari Debnath
Sayari Debnath
Sayari Debnath is a culture journalist at Scroll, where she writes about books, art, and literary trends. She translates from Bengali and Hindi to English. She is the winner of the 2025 Rabindranath Tagore Award for Translation, and was shortlisted for the 2025 Valley of Words Book Awards for English Translation and the 2024 Armory Square Prize for South Asian Literature in Translation, and longlisted for the 2025 Crossword Book Awards (Translation). Her debut work of translation was published in 2024, and two more books have been published since then. A collection of translated short stories and a novel are forthcoming before the end of the year.
Original language
Bengali
Publishing status
Translation extract
About the book
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About the book
Fear, Great Fear! is a tale of power, corruption, and the consequences of standing up to it. Bishnu has a dream typical of many middle-class Indians – to own a house. He has bought a plot of land and even decided on the name of the house. He hands over his plot to a real estate developer to supervise the construction of the house. After a long period of inaction, when he insists that the construction start, he finds himself the target of the developer’s relentless intimidation tactics, aided by the goons of a local political party. The outcome is a peculiar kind of drama where a common man is ensnared in the nexus of corruption, unlawful politics, and hooliganism. No ending can be a happy one, or can it?
Rights available
World English