Gossip and banter with Marx Sumanta Banerjee Translated by Shampa Banerjee Readers familiar with the works of Sumanta Banerjee, social historian in the activist mode In the Wake of Naxalbari (1980), Thema Book of Naxalite Poetry (1987), The Parlour and the Streets (1989) will find a different Sumanta Banerjee in the present book-his first work in Bengali to be translated into English. With Marx at the centre of his musings, he plays with some of his ideas in different historical situations after his own time; in imaginary encounters he stages with Marx, where the interlocutors include Mirza Ghalib, Rabindranath Tagore, Hiren Mukherjee, Charu Majumdar, Saroj Dutta, and Sumanta Banerjee himself. With all the fun and frolic, gossip and banter, it is the contemporary relevance and value of Marxism that is at stake. Publication Thema