Battles of Our Own - Paperback

by Jagadish Mohanty (Author), Himansu S. Mohapatra (Translator), Paul St-Pierre (Translator)

Battles of Our Own (Nija Nija Panipatha) by Jagadish Mohanty (1951-2013), was published in 1990. It is set in the coal mining area of western Odisha, where the author worked all his life. The conflict between the coal mine administration and the trade union in an industrial setting gives the novel its plot, characters and atmosphere. The conflict-ridden world of a colliery makes it an exemplar of the 'industrial novel' in Odia and perhaps in Indian literature. The setting of the novel makes it unique, setting it apart from the majority of mainstream Odia novels of the time, with their polite and placid settings and their themes of romance or social success.

Author Biography

Author:
Jagadish Mohanty (1951-2013) is an influential Odia writer whose most productive years were from the 1970s through to the 1990s, although he was active right until his untimely death at 62. A trend setter in Odia short fiction, he mediated the existentialist experience of angst and alienation, thereby giving Odia literature the much needed international exposure. Two finest short story collections out of his thirteen are Dakshina Duari Ghara (South-Facing House), published in 1979, and Album (1981). The two are also available in English translation. He wrote five novels, including Kanishka Kanishka (1986), which explored the moral dilemmas faced by ordinary individuals in their quest for an authentic existence. Nija Nija Panipatha (1990), translated as Battles of Our Own, is a unique Indian example of the industrial novel
Translators:
Himansu S. Mohapatra is a literary critic and translator. He has produced, with Paul St-Pierre, an edited volume of Odia stories in English translation, entitled The Other Side of Reason (2008), and, two fiction translations: Basanti: Writing the New Woman (2019)-it is the first woman-oriented Odia novel written by nine authors in 1931-and Letters to Jorina (2021), an epistolary novella by Ganeswar Mishra. A selection of his literary journalism has been published as Model of the Middle (2014). He studied at Sambalpur Univerisity, Odisha and University of East Anglia, Norwich, and taught English at Berhampur University and Utkal University, Odisha.
Paul St-Pierre taught translation in Canada. He has collaborated on translations of literary texts from Odia into English. Among these are: Six Acres and a Third (by Phakirmohan Senapati, co-translated with R.S. Mishra, S.P. Mohanty and J.K. Nayak and published by University of California Press: 2005 and Penguin: 2006; a later translation [Six and a Third Acres] in collaboration with Leelawati and K.K. Mohapatra, was published by Aleph in 2021); Atmacharita (also by Phakirmohan Senapati; National Book Trust of India, 2016; translated with D.R. Pattanaik and B.K. Tripathy). Oxford University Press published in 2019 his co-translation, with Himansu S. Mohapatra, of Basanti, and Aleph has published his translation with Leelawati and K.K. Mohapatra of The Greatest Odia Stories ever Told (2019).