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1Clear out junk files and repair common Windows errors2Scan for outdated or missing drivers - takes under a minute3Repair Windows errors before they cause bigger problemsHome in the Dark: Selected Stories is a Bengali short-story collection by Jayanta Dey, translated into English by Sayari Debnath. Its fifteen stories place macabre and psychologically unsettling events in Calcutta and its suburbs, probing the violence and moral compromise concealed beneath ordinary respectability. Rahul Singh’s review for Hindustan Times finds particular force in “Gopal’s Widow” and “Pendulum,” while noting that “The Price” feels scattered.
What is Home in the Dark about?
Seagull Books frames the collection with the question, “When civility is just a mask, what happens when it slips?” The stories answer through people whose private lives are shaken by death, betrayal, desperation, crime, or historical hatred. Their settings are Calcutta and its suburbs; the tension comes from the distance between a respectable surface and what is happening underneath it.
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The situations range from a woman on the brink of suicide and a rat to a stolen clock entangled with communal hatred, and a writer-publisher partnership in pornography that turns against its participants. The publisher’s synopsis calls out the collection’s macabre and psychological elements. These are not simply tales of shock: family ties, friendship, and social history shape what each unsettling turn means.
How many stories are in the book?
The official contents list has fifteen stories. A Hindustan Times review by Rahul Singh, published October 2, 2026, describes the book as a collection of twelve; the publisher and University of Chicago Press list fifteen. The discrepancy appears to reflect Singh discussing a selection rather than the publisher’s full contents.
#1 Best Overall
- “Poison”
- “The Wedding Anniversary”
- “My Mother”
- “Gopal’s Widow”
- “A Hidden Hell”
- “Pendulum”
- “Rasik-babu’s Horse”
- “Blood Relation”
- “A Family”
- “The Tunnel”
- “The Price”
- “A Deception”
- “Tiger’s Claw”
- “Thirty-Two Pages”
- “The Stench of Relief”
Stories that show the collection’s range
“Poison” and the first impression
Singh describes “Poison” opening with a young woman watching a poisoned rat while feeling the poison taking hold of her. For him, the image establishes themes that recur across the collection: vulnerability, danger, and the way inner distress can become inseparable from the world around a character.
“Gopal’s Widow” and the afterlife of friendship
Singh selects “Gopal’s Widow” as the collection’s best story. Its narrator is close to a couple, and Gopal’s death makes the widow’s subsequent life a way to examine male friendship and the emptiness an untimely death leaves behind. The emphasis is not only on loss, but on the relationships forced to change around it.
“Pendulum” and historical violence
In “Pendulum,” restoration of a clock and an exchange between a son and his school friend lead toward communal hatred and the Great Calcutta Killings of 1946, as Singh describes the story. A domestic object and an ordinary conversation become entry points to violence with a larger historical reach.
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“A Family” and “The Tunnel”
“A Family” follows Jhinuk after she returns home having committed a crime. She expects wrath but encounters tears and love. Singh reads the story as an account of how crime darkens a home within a family, rather than simply as a question of punishment.
“The Tunnel” follows a disabled teenager trying to understand why her father has returned after years away, during which he became an ascetic. The story’s central uncertainty is intimate: what can a child make of a parent’s absence and sudden return?
“Thirty-Two Pages” and the cost of a hidden life
In “Thirty-Two Pages,” a celebrated writer has withdrawn to the countryside after being identified as the author of pornographic fiction. Singh praises Dey’s ability to render inner life through a single episode and simple sentences. The premise puts reputation and private creativity in tension without requiring elaborate exposition.
What holds the stories together?
Singh sees travel, both literal and figurative, as a connecting thread: characters research, commute, visit, flee, or return. That movement suits a collection preoccupied with thresholds—between home and elsewhere, respectability and exposure, loyalty and betrayal, or private trouble and public history. People do not remain untouched by the places and relationships they move through.
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Outbyte PC Repair FREEClear out junk files and repair common Windows errorsFree Scan →Outbyte Driver Updater FREEFix the driver behind crashes, sound loss and screen glitchesFind Drivers →The stories also shift scale. A poisoned rat or a repaired clock can anchor a character’s personal crisis; family crime and communal violence widen the frame. This mix helps explain why the book’s macabre situations are paired with social and psychological concerns rather than serving as ends in themselves.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.Strengths and reservations
Singh praises the restraint and ferocity of most of the stories, and singles out “Gopal’s Widow” and “Pendulum” for their handling of friendship, bereavement, and history. His reservation is “The Price,” which he finds scattered because of its many characters and names. That is one reviewer’s assessment, not a consensus or a claim that every reader will respond the same way.
For readers choosing a book, the main distinction is between an interconnected novel and a varied collection: this is fifteen separate stories, linked by recurring concerns and settings rather than one continuous plot. Its appeal is likely strongest for readers interested in translated Bengali fiction, psychologically unsettled characters, and the collision of domestic life with wider social conflict.
Edition and publication details
| Detail | Information |
|---|---|
| Author | Jayanta Dey |
| Translator | Sayari Debnath; translated from Bengali |
| Publisher | Seagull Books; distributed in the United States by University of Chicago Press |
| Format and ISBN | Hardback, ISBN 9781803095714; eISBN 9781803095721 |
| Length and size | 252 pages; 6 × 9 inches |
| Series/category | The India List; fiction |
| Catalog date fields | Seagull Books lists 2026 as the publication year; University of Chicago Press lists copyright 2025. These are different catalog fields, not a single universal release date. |
See the Seagull Books listing or the University of Chicago Press catalog entry for publisher and distributor details. The hardback ISBN is useful when checking a retailer listing; confirm that a listing matches the intended format. Catalog records also identify an eISBN, but do not establish that electronic and hardback editions differ in content.
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