Eagle Books

Price: $39.95

The stories selected in this book, taken from the collection of Rabindranath Tagore’s Katha O Kahini, cover a wide range of themes including the humble offering of a poor gardener to the divinity (“Priceless Gain”), the search fordivinity as one’s birth right (“Truth”), the royal compassion towards the poor and deprived (“TheTrifling Loss”), the humility of the king to serve his subjects (“The Representative”), the union of a devotee with her master (“Devotee”), and the harsh realities of prejudice and superstition that take away all reasoning making the human devil’s prey (“The God’s Wrath”). Each story has a subtle idea to convey. The artists have tried to convey these ideas through their artwork helping the reader to become one with the author’s heart.

Rabindranath Tagore was born on May 7, 1861, in Calcutta (Kolkata), India. He was known widely as a Bengali poet, author, songwriter, philosopher, artist, and educator. He received his Nobel Prize for his literary writing of Gitanjali (“Song Offerings”), a collection of mystical and devotional songs, in 1913. The Nobel committee wrote – “because of his profoundly sensitive, fresh and beautiful verse….he has made his poetic thought….a part of the literature of the West….” It would be the first of many volumes that earned him much acclaim in the East and West. Tagore’s life and works have made him a cultural icon, world over, even into the 21st Century.

He wrote Katha O Kahini (Tales and Stories), the collection of poems based on stories from history, folk tales and legends in 1900. He was a prodigious writer and left to the world his sensitive feelings in his gift of words. All the great utterances of man have to be judged not by the letter but by the spirit—the spirit which unfolds itself with the growth of life in history. This illustrated presentation of Tagore’s stories, is intended for the global readers to appreciate the beauty of Tagore’s vision towards humanity. This is an attempt to overcome the barrier of language caressing the soft touch of human appeal described by Tagore.