The Bengali Detectives the World Overlooked
Feluda, Byomkesh, and Priyanath cracked impossible cases, inspired generations, and became literary legends. So why didn’t they find global fame?
As 13-year-old Topshe tells his cousin Feluda about what transpired earlier in the day, Feluda interrupts to tell him exactly where Topshe was sitting. “You chose a bench on the right side of the Radha restaurant, didn’t you?” A bewildered Topshe responds, “How did you guess?” Feluda observes: “Your left cheek looks sunburnt, but the right one is all right. This could happen only if you sat on that side of the Mall.” The 27-year-old man has “read so many detective novels” that he could “work as a sleuth” — and it shows.
“Not only was he a man with acute powers of observation and a razor-sharp brain, we learnt, but he also possessed a deep and thorough knowledge of virtually every subject under the sun, ranging from history to hypnotism,” translator Gopa Majumdar wrote about Feluda in 2004.
Bengal’s sleuths — Feluda, Byomkesh, and Priyanath — and their adventures have filled magazines, books, films, and radio and TV shows for generations. Yet, while Sherlock Holmes and Hercule Poirot have become global household names, the region’s detectives have rarely traveled beyond the Bengali community.