Powerful Prose
Dr. Banira Giri establishes herself as one of the best women writers depicting strong inner ideological feelings through her powerful expression and human characters.
Whether they are poems, stories or other literary works of any kind, Dr. Banira Giri's writings express reality. Following the publication of Karagar (The Prison), Dr. Giri established herself as the best woman fiction writer of Nepal .
Translated by Ann Hunkins, Dr. Banira Giri's fiction ‘The Prison’ portrays a feeling of liberated woman and her determination. Dr. Giri's powerful expression gives life to the book.
"The Prison' has left behind Parijat's Shrish Ko Phool at every step like in story, poetic expression, establishing powerful human characters and ideology, as well as equally powerful liberated woman character, a character which did not need even a name but strongly made an impact in the hearts of reader," writes Madan Mani Dixit, eminent writer, editor and former vice chancellor of Royal Nepalese Academy.
As Dixit observes, The Prison is a fiction based on philosophical thought. Although many writers have already written many fictions over the years, The Prison is first of its kind, which is based on powerful ideology of liberation.
First published in 1979 in Nepali, the book explains how a woman live in a society like prison with little choices. The book is so popular that it has already been reprinted five times.
One of the important aspects of the fiction is that it retains its popularity for more than two and a half decades. The nameless narrator of Karagar is an intelligent, educated and unmarried woman living alone with an affair with married man. Explaining the 1970s conservative society, the woman shows courage and determination to change the society widening her choices. In the course of narration, the book also gives vivid scenarios of contemporary Nepalese society, which still exists.
According to Hindu tradition, women are given very limited role in her family with limited space to choose their life. Once woman gets married, they are part of husband's family.
"Extramarital affairs were not spoken of publicly and were seldom subject of a literary novel, especially by a woman. Women writers in Nepal are often presumed to be writing autobiography, which probably keeps many potential books from being written. Social pressure can be intense, so this female protagonist was seen as breaking new ground in choosing the kind of life she did. Her works are often strongly feminist and acutely observant of social situations in Nepal . She is one of the very few Nepali women writers who has established a reputation outside Nepal, having read her work from Tashkent to Tokyo, Nepal to New York and Pakistan to Paris," observe translator Hunkins.
Despite increasing level of awareness and high literacy, women are yet to be liberated, as their world is still small. Dr. Giri's courage to write on woman's life and social surrounding two and a half decade ago was a brave job. For western writers, the situation depicted in the fiction may seem like something out of imagination.
“Banira Giri is an established name in fiction writing. In the range of her fictions, The Prison has occupied an extraordinary place in the panorama of Nepali novels to justify its representative materials in style, approach, content and what not," writes publisher Lamichhane.
Thanks to Dr. Banira Giri, other people living in different parts of the world also can now read about and understand the situation of Nepalese women and their small world.
The Prison
By: Banira Giri
Edited and Translated from Nepali With an Introduction by Ann Hunkins
Published by: Jiba Lamichhane, New Baneswor, Phone 4485419
Price: Rs 500.00 (hard cover) Rs.300.00 (paperback)
Pages: 214
