Rajani: Songs of the Night

(Hardback)

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Rajani: Songs of the Night (1916) is a poetry collection by Dhan Gopal Mukerji. Published while Mukerji was a young student in California, Rajani: Songs of the Night is the debut collection of poems from the first Indian writer to gain a popular audience in the United States. Lyrical and romantic, Mukerjis poems capture his commitment to beauty while maintaining his sense of isolation and exile as a young man living far from home. In Bhikshus Song, the collections opening poem, the poet greets a Buddhist monk at the door, returning in memory to his native Bengal. Repeating the Bhikshus mantra throughoutOm Moni Padme Om!Mukerji allows himself to drift with the stream / To [his] destination of dream. An exile, Mukerji can only reach his homeland through memory and song, by infusing English meter with the sights and sounds of Bengal. A singer that sings of sorrow; / Whose night knows no tomorrow; / [His] song finds its source / In its moonless immensity. Although he never returned to his native country, Mukerji left an inspiring legacy through his literary achievement and unwavering commitment to Indian independence. With a beautifully designed cover and professionally typeset manuscript, this edition of Dhan Gopal Mukerjis Rajani: Songs of the Night is a classic of Indian American literature reimagined for modern readers.

Author Bio

James Branch Cabell (1879-1958) was an American writer of escapist and fantasy fiction. Born into a wealthy family in the state of Virginia, Cabell attended the College of William and Mary, where he graduated in 1898 following a brief personal scandal. His first stories began to be published, launching a productive decade in which Cabell's worked appeared in both Harper's Monthly Magazine and The Saturday Evening Post. Over the next forty years, Cabell would go on to publish fifty-two books, many of them novels and short-story collections. A friend, colleague, and inspiration to such writers as Ellen Glasgow, H.L. Mencken, Sinclair Lewis, and Theodore Dreiser, James Branch Cabell is remembered as an iconoclastic pioneer of fantasy literature.