[T]oday I will narrate that untold tale after all these years. Cronies, lend me your ears.’

Urged by his friends, Domorudhor embarks on a journey to recount his incredible adventures filled with magical characters. A friendly fish-hungry ghost, a puffed-rice and fried-peas eating corpse, a man-eating tree that devours a ghost, a human clone, a woman selling brinjals inside a crocodile’s stomach, a half-human, half-bovine creature-all appear in Domoru’s tall tales.

In Domoruchorit, Troilokyonath Mukhopadhyay uses magic realism to weave sociopolitical realities of nineteenth-century Bengal: casteism, child marriage and widowhood, colonial oppression, Swadeshi movement. The stories celebrate the adda culture, carry the flavour of an old-world charm and male bonding, and are often conversational and digressive, being full of wit and satire.