{"product_id":"bengal-nights-9780226204192","title":"Bengal Nights","description":"Set in 1930s Calcutta, this is a \u003ci\u003eroman   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\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e Offered 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. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e A 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. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e 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.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAbout the Author\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eEliade, Mircea:\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e - \u003cb\u003eMircea Eliade \u003c\/b\u003e(1907-1986) was the Sewell L. Avery Distinguished Service Professor at the Divinity School and professor in the Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago. He was one of the most influential scholars of religion of the 20th century and one of the world's foremost interpreters of religious symbolism and myth. Eliade was the author of many works of scholarship and fiction, including \u003ci\u003eA History of Religious Ideas\u003c\/i\u003e and ten novels.","brand":"University of Chicago Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":50726069698834,"sku":"9780226204192","price":15.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0831\/4771\/8930\/files\/img_5196888b-dc6a-4e28-8c79-f950a36854f6.jpg?v=1734853164","url":"https:\/\/surprise-castle.myshopify.com\/products\/bengal-nights-9780226204192","provider":"Surprise Castle","version":"1.0","type":"link"}