Lineage, Legacy, and Historical Memory
Year: 2026
Type: article
Abstract: This study examines Shirshendu Mukhopadhyay’s Durbin as a powerful example of the family saga genre within twentieth-century Bengali literature. Using family saga theory, narratology, and postcolonial studies, this article employs close textual analysis to examine how the novel departs from conventional linear genealogies through its non-sequential, bifurcated narrative design. It analyzes the concepts of theorists such as Mikhail Bakhtin, Gérard Genette, Mieke Bal, Homi Bhabha, Paul Ricoeur, and Monika Fludernik to reveal how Durbin integrates generational memory, ideological transformation, and cultural rituals into a multi-layered narrative structure that interrogates the intersections of domestic life and historical rupture. This article places personal narratives within the socio-political context of colonialism, Partition, and post-independence disillusionment to argue that Mukhopadhyay’s novel reconfigures traditional saga structures. This research also suggests that Durbin offers a critical intervention in genre discourse by provincializing Eurocentric models and foregrounding South Asian epistemologies. This article contributes to the expanding field of global saga studies by showing how Durbin functions as both a literary and historiographic text that engages with the complexities of inheritance, identity, and resistance in a postcolonial context.
Authors: Md Tapu Rayhan, Nure Jannat
Institution: Noakhali Science and Technology University
Language: English
Subfield: Literature and Literary Theory
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
OpenAlex ID: W7162126338
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