Sharatchandra Chattopadhyay has been the most popular writer of novels and short stories in his native Bengaland in India at large. Despite this, he remains unrecognized in the English speaking world. Narasingha P. Sil fills this void by presenting a historical critical assessment of his upbringing and the experiences that influenced his masterful and magnificent work. The Life of Sharatchandra Chattopadhyay rescues the authentic man, a caste-conscious and patriarchal Brahmin of colonial Bengal, from the cuckoo land of gratuitous praise and panegyric showered on the Aparajeya Kathasilpi, the "invincible" wordsmith. The author exposes Sharatchandra's innate conservative worldview and his romantic platonic concept of human sexuality that inform all his love stories. In many respects Sharatchandra resembles his formidable European forbear, Jean Jacques Rousseau of Enlightenment France. The concluding chapter of Sil's biographical study introduces this pioneering comparison between the two men-a veritable tour de force.

Narasingha P. Sil taught at colleges in Calcutta and Chandannagar for three years and at the University of Benin for seven years before moving to Western Oregon University in January 1987, from where he retired as professor of history in July 2011. His working paper "The Babu of Colonial Calcutta: A Reassessment" was published by Monash University Press in 2009. His bibliographical essay on Sri Ramakrsna will be published by Oxford University Press in 2012. His monograph, Swami Vivekananda: A Reassessment (Susquehanna University Press, prior to 1997), was selected by Choice as an "Outstanding Academic Book" in the field of religious studies.