BRATA, Sasthi. Typescript of She and He. Hampstead, [ c. 1971].
Quarto 'IXL File', ff. [v, stencilled title, biography of the author, statement of fictionality, quotations from Edith Sitwell and T. S. Eliot, prefatory statement], 86, [1, sectional title], 87-306, [1, sectional title], 307A, 307-321, 321A, 322-379; file somewhat worn and bent; final leaf loose, penultimate leaf with a few marginal stains, title a little spotted; author's address and phone number in red ink on title; typed and signed letter by the New York publisher Arthur W. Wang to Brata, dated 1967, New Statesman printed manuscript refusal note and 4-page typescript essay by Brata titled Cries of a Trapped Liberal loosely inserted.
She and He, the author's second novel appeared in New Delhi in 1973 and focuses, after the Confessions of an Indian Woman Eater on the sexual exploits of the hero, of Arab and French extraction, who lives in Hampstead, wants to write and talks about the 'Great English Novel'. The version of the novel is here titled Put in your Breast a Stone, and one interesting aspect of the book is that his ex-girlfriend sends him an unfinished novel, having written her side of the story, with blank pages (marked as such in the typescript) for the hero and narrator to fill in.
Sasthibrata Chakravarti was born in Calcutta, in 1939, worked in Europe as a lavatory attendant, kitchen porter, barman, air-conditioning engineer, and postman, and in New York as a freelance journalist.
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