Edited by Ayesha Mukherjee, Abhijit Gupta, Sujit Kumar Mandal and Shrutakirti Dutta
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This graphic anthology brings to light a selection of stories of famine from both India and Britain, presented through the work of two teams of artists. It offers two versions of each famine tale - one retold by patachitrakars from the Naya village and another by modern comics artists. The Naya artists from Midnapore, West Bengal, tell the tales in their traditional style of scroll painting. Their scrolls are based on original narrative poems composed by the legendary patachitrakar, the late Dukhushyam Chitrakar. A second team of artists adapted and illustrated the same historical narratives of famine in the form of comics.
 
Ranging between depictions of dearth in Bengali oral poetry, famine in the time of Shakespeare, the merchant Peter Mundy's travels to Surat and Agra, the Midlands Rising of 1607 and finally, the harrowing famine of Bengal in 1770, the artwork in this pathbreaking collection is an extraordinary and vivid reimagination of the intertwined histories of food security and dearth in India and Britain. With its use of patachitra and comics, Famine Tales offers a thought-provoking and poignant exploration of the impact of famine on the cultural memories and politics of Indian people, and the long-standing effects on the Indian economy and socio-economic structures.
 
Publication Jadavpur University Press [] Find more information below