About book The Complete Adventures Of Feluda, Vol. 1 (2015)
the main protagonist, Pradosh Mitter, a private investigator says "we have nothing new to do, we just follow the paths of the past masters Holmes and Poirot" and so he does. Satyajit Ray, the master himself creates a vivid picture of an everyday yet uncannily sharp common Kolkata bengali man, flanked by his cousin and writer-friend LalMohan Ganguly...and their activities to describe in one line are "a silent storm"...the characterisations are simple yet very detailed..infact Ray's attention to detail..every single of them..which restaurant they eat in..what car they travel in...what brand of cigarette Feluda smokes..what is the color of the suitcase Jatayu uses..and so on...really seem to draw the reader into their world.The plots of the stories are very intelligent...and a nice thing is that the twists n the stories are really an element of surprise..they do hit you unexpectedly..he just doesn't spray the plot with twists. Because of the time when the stories were written, the crime is not organized and hi-tech..rather the stories really give the readers of our generation a very good idea of what life was like back then..again that is due to the impeccable details...another thing is that Satyajit Ray writes in a language which is very similar to the way we speak..and so it it seems like someone is actually speaking out his story rather than we reading it.Ray also gives a very solid and definite nature to the characters may it be the trio or the villains like Maganlal Meghraj, The repeated use of certain caricatures by the characters like Jatayu's trouble with english or his obsession with the poetry of his past professor, Feluda's characteristic Charminar cigarette etc. really build a very strong picture of them in the readers' minds. Ray also takes care to make sure that all the readers understand everything that they might not in the stories, for example a para-psychologist comes along and Ray knows many people might not know what para-psychologist means, so he beautifully makes Topshe ask Feluda what it means and Feluda replies..and all the readers get to know what it means..he does quite often, and in many other ways without really boring those who know.anothe thing is quite often Feluda goes out..and the way Ray describes the place..though isn't travel-story but does give a very good idea to the reader about the place...its geography, food, lifestyle, places to see etc...Overall I have to say Satyajit Ray is one of the geniuses of the 20th century (one can't agree more if he/she sees his filsm as well) and Feluda really is the way he imagined himself...I remeber my father telling me that once Satyajit Ray had said he kept himself in mind while portraying Feluda
Feluda was recommended to me by many including my parents who had read the stories when they were kids. Written by master film maker Satyajit Ray in the 1970s, the first Feluda adventure was published in Ray's Bengali magazine for kids 'Sandesh'. Meant originally for children and teens,the series soon became hit with the adult readers as well and everyone wanted a Feluda adventure to read and share right from 8 year olds to 50 year old adults. My first reaction on hearing the name Feluda was "oh no, some stupid teenager who wants to solve some kiddish mysteries!" Obviously i was proved wrong. The stories start from Danger in Darjeeling to the The curse of the goddess (in vol.1) and each holds the reader in spell binding suspense. As i had read Byomkesh Bakshi before staring on Feluda, The first two stories did seem a bit lame but the pace begins to pick up as you start " Trouble in Gangtok"Talking about the characters, Feluda aka Pradosh C Mitter is a 27 year old (nah, he is not a teen!) who has a photographic memory and a great deal of knowledge of about everything in the world! He knows only Bengali and English, uses Greek to write in his personal notebook, is valiant and brave and is very secretive. Not even Topshe, his cousin and aide and our narrator, comes to know about his intentions right till the end. Topshe or Tapesh is a 15 year old teen (who is shown to be 13 at the start) who is the narrator of our story and a great admirer of his cousin. Infact you get so used to Topshe narrating the stories so well, that you feel him to be a part of yourself and watching the action at the battle scene rather than only reading about it. Lalmohan Ganguli or Jatayu is a writer of crime thrillers whose physical appearance is completely opposite to that expected from a writer of crime fiction. His under developed persona and slow mind provide comic relief throughout the book. It is difficult to think about Feluda without Jatayu.Every lover of mysteries and crime fiction should and must read Feluda.
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The Feluda stories is a collection of delightful, down-to-earth Indian short stories that has been translated from Bengali to English. It is for young readers, and is something between Enid Blyton and Sherlock Holmes in terms of intellectual content.The setting and characters are very Indian, set in the seventies or thereabouts, and very endearing. People say that the original in Bengali was a masterpiece, and I can quite believe that as Satyajit Ray was indeed fantastic. Unfortunately, the translation to English is middling, and detracts a little bit. Much seems to have been lost in translation.But I was able to see beyond the English into Feluda's quaint world. Very nice!The book deserves only a 3-star. However, I give it an additional star for the setting. It takes me back forty years when Binaca and Aspro were popular brands, and the world was far simpler than it is today.
—Qube
As this is collection the review will be more about the characters that make up this string of stories rather than any specific story. The character of Feluda is no doubt inspired by other famous fictional detectives, primarily Holmes and Poirot; a point which the character himself points out in on of the tales. Satyajit Ray's genius is in realizing the true magic of Holmes lies not in the characterization of the main characters but in the detailed environment that exists around them. Reading through the various stories it is so easy to pulled into the locales that Mr. Ray so beautifully portrays. It is a must read for any fan of popular detective stories. There are two regrets whenever I read these stories. One, I wish I could read it in the original Bengali. While my friends tell me that the translation is quite competent I am sure that the original would have had an even more magical touch, especially since the master wrote it. The other regret is that I could not read it in the original form of each story/chapter coming out in consecutive issues of the magazine. How magical it would have been to wait for the next issue to come.All in all a good book to own.
—Brijesh Kartha
Great book but HORRIBLE PAGE QUALITY by PENGUINFeluda stories are good; I will read all of them sometime soon.About this volume: shame be on Penguin! They have dishonored Satyajit Ray by providing the two volumes with abysmal pages! The page quality is really poor; you will feel outraged.Where did I buy it?: I bought it online from HomeShop18 with almost 50 % discount (also using a discount code). They source from reputed dealers. So it is an original copy from Penguin and not a spurious copy from the flea/gray market.
—vik
