Sabarna Roy is a critically acclaimed award-winning author of six books. Fiction lovers with a zeal to read novels that are different than the usual will find Roy’s books a treat.
The author writes about real people and real circumstances with modern settings. This in a manner that jolts many a reader into wondering if a particular incident in his book is not derived from his own life.
Roy’s journey has been iconic and all his books have been well received and loved by critics too. A look at his literary works so far:
Pentacles
Pentacles comprise one long story and four short poems. The work delightfully bridges the gap between the mundane and arcane writings of today and provides an interesting, yet intellectually stimulating treat for the discerning reader.
‘New Life’ is a long story written from the perspective of a successful adult whose mother had deserted the family for another man. The teenage angst and the scars it has left behind on the psyche of the protagonist are subtly reflected in the character. The different elements and characters of the story are beautifully interwoven to produce an intense and compelling story of an adult haunted by the trauma of being deserted by his mother. The work is interspersed with thought-provoking views on issues like love and the socio-economic conditions in India.
Frosted Glass
Frosted Glass comprises one story cycle consisting of 14 stories and one poem cycle consisting of 21 poems. The stories, set in Calcutta, bring to the fore the darkness lurking in the human psyche and bare the baser instincts. The stories, compactly written and marked by insightful dialogues, raise contemporary issues like man-woman relationships and their strains, morals, and ethics, environmental degradation, class inequality, rapid and mass-scale unmindful urbanisation. They are also devoid of sentimentalisation.
The result is they remain focused and moved around the central character who is named Rahul in all the stories. We encounter the events that shape, mar, guide Rahul’s life and also the lives of those around him, making us question the very essence of existence. Rahul symbolises the modern man; he is not just one character, but all of us rolled into one.
The story cycle stands out for two reasons — its brilliant narrative and the dispassionate style with which betrayal in personal relationships and resultant loneliness have been handled.
Abyss
Abyss is a full-length play in two acts with an interval in between. It is essentially a racy crime thriller full of gritty suspense. Act one builds up slowly to result in a crescendo of conflicts between personalities and ideas, finally ending with an unnatural death before the interval. Is it a suicide or a murder?
Act two evolves through a series of incisive interrogations to unravel the truth, which is deeply disturbing and affecting. As the play unfolds into a very well-crafted situational thriller, underneath is the debate about using land for agriculture or industry, the ethics of a working author, and the nexus of a modern state, all wonderfully enmeshed into its storyline and the personal lives of its subtly etched out characters. The high points of the play are its central conflict between a mother and her daughter who is also a sleuth, Renuka.
Winter Poems
The poems contained in this collection, Winter Poems, were inspired by the relatively mild season that prevails in Kolkata following the season of festivities, the Durga and Kali Puja, and portray myriad shades of human life. Some of them deal with the imaginations of death and home while still others the idea of loss and coming to terms with gradual wasting of life. Many aspects of human life and commonplace human impulses are examined and brought to life through a range of imaginations and varied metaphorical associations. The poems are sure to delight the readers and generate a whole range of emotions among them.
Random Subterranean Mosaic 2012 – 2018
Random Subterranean Mosaic: 2012–2018 is a kaleidoscope of the random, yet mysteriously structured pattern of fiction, semi-autobiographical pieces, covering poems, short-shorts, opinions, observations, and conversations. Roy says: “All my life I have struggled to achieve an optimal lucidity in language and expression that is required to demystify the hidden self and selves and agendas. I hope I have achieved this in a large measure in this fifth book of mine!”
Etchings of the First Quarter of 2020
Etchings of the First Quarter of 2020 comprises a novella and a poem cycle.
The novella, in the background, is a sweetly evolving dialogue between a step-father and a step-daughter, and in the foreground, it is a dissection of ideas pivoted around the dualism of human life by discussing literary characters like Lolita, Humbert Humbert, Anna Karenina, and Nikhilesh; thought-leaders like Hegel, Marx, and Heisenberg; political phenomena like the Bolshevik Revolution; schizophrenia, love as an idea, and the secret love story of T.S. Eliot; and ecological phenomena like marine conservation.
All of this is done uniquely, almost as if we are engaged in a conversation with the author, to make us realise the plurality of life and accepting it to find peace and harmony in life. The poem cycle is an anthology of 20 sharp-edged poems that excite and thrill you as you are encapsulated in the whirlwind of the confrontations between the poet and his alter-ego.
Fractured Mosaic
Fractured Mosaic is in essence a sequel to his fifth literary work Random Subterranean Mosaic: 2012 – 2018. It is yet another kaleidoscope from his arsenal that will take the readers into a mesmerising whirlpool. Most of the works published in this book have been earlier published in reputed media houses as musings of an author. In this book, they have been brought together for the benefit of all readers. After the smashing hit of his earlier six masterpieces since 2010, Roy has been constantly writing in the format of a journal to imitate how the mind works in real life.
Roy’s Frosted Glass did very well in the market. His Pentacles and Winter Poems did so well that Amazon Audible converted them into audiobooks. He has been awarded the Literoma Laureate Award in 2019, Literoma Star Achiever Award 2020, Random Subterranean Mosaic: 2012 – 2018 won the best book of the year 2019, the A-List Award for excellence in fiction by the NewsX Media House, Certificate for The Real Super Heroes for spreading a spirit of positivity and hope during the COVID-19 Pandemic from Forever Star India Award 2020, and the Certificate for Participation in the Indo Russian Friendship Celebration 2020, and the Literoma Golden Star Award 2020: Lifetime Achievement.
What’s extraordinary about Roy is the fact that he passed with first class honours in Civil Engineering from Jadavpur University in 1988 and started writing professionally only after having spent 19 years in the corporate sector. He is presently working as Senior Vice President and is in the 25th year of his employment with Electrosteel Group where he is engaged in giving leadership to Business Development, Applications Technology, and certain key strategies at Electrosteel Group.
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