{"product_id":"9780226204192","title":"Bengal Nights","description":"Set in 1930s Calcutta, this is a \u003ci\u003eroman á clef\u003c\/i\u003e of remarkable intimacy. Originally published in Romanian in 1933, this semiautobiographical novel by the world renowned scholar Mircea Eliade details the passionate awakenings of Alain, an ambitious young French engineer flush with colonial pride and prejudice and full of a European fascination with the mysterious subcontinent. \u003cp\u003eOffered the hospitality of a senior Indian colleague, Alain grasps at the chance to discover the authentic India firsthand. He soon finds himself enchanted by his host's daughter, the lovely and inscrutable Maitreyi, a precocious young poet and former student of Tagore. What follows is a charming, tentative flirtation that soon, against all the proprieties and precepts of Indian society, blossoms into a love affair both impossible and ultimately tragic. This erotic passion plays itself out in Alain's thoughts long after its bitter conclusion. In hindsight he sets down the story, quoting from the diaries of his disordered days, and trying to make sense of the sad affair. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eA vibrantly poetic love story, \u003ci\u003eBengal Nights\u003c\/i\u003e is also a cruel account of the wreckage left in the wake of a young man's self discovery. At once horrifying and deeply moving, Eliade's story repeats the patterns of European engagement with India even as it exposes and condemns them. Invaluable for the insight it offers into Eliade's life and thought, it is a work of great intellectual and emotional power. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\"\u003ci\u003eBengal Nights\u003c\/i\u003e is forceful and harshly poignant, written with a great love of India informed by clear-eyed understanding. But do not open it if you prefer to remain unmoved by your reading matter. It is enough to make stones weep.\" -- \u003ci\u003eLiterary Review\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eMircea Eliade (1907-1986) was the Sewell L. Avery Distinguished Service Professor in the Divinity School and the Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago. Many of his scholarly works, as well as his two-volume autobiography and four-volume journal, are published by the University of Chicago Press. Translated into French in 1950, \u003ci\u003eBengal Nights\u003c\/i\u003e was an immediate critical success. The film, \u003ci\u003eLes Nuits Bengali\u003c\/i\u003e, appeared in 1987.  \u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"University of Chicago Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":48728648843504,"sku":"9780226204192","price":17.5,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/9780226204192_p0.jpg?v=1768593947","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/9780226204192","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}