Saptarshi, Gangchil, Lalmati, Ababhash & Prativas

Five small, independent Bengali publishers, each with a list of its own.

Gangchil was started by the writer Adhir Biswas, who came to Calcutta with his family in 1967, aged twelve, to give a platform to writers from marginalised communities. It publishes Partition memoir, refugee history and Dalit writing, and keeps a shop in the Barnaparichay market on College Street. Saptarshi Prakashan, of Srirampur and Kolkata, publishes Nabarun Bhattacharya and a selection from the magazine Ekshan. Lalmati reissues Bengali comics and children's classics by Narayan Debnath, Mayukh Chowdhury and Pramadaranjan Ray. Ababhash publishes the prose of Manindra Gupta and Parimal Bhattacharya. Prativas, the oldest of the five, has published poets' collected works since the mid-1980s.

All five were bringing out new books in the 2020s.

Ask the desk for a book from here.