Ghostly Past, Capitalist Presence A Social History of Fear in Colonial Bengal

"The best account I have yet read of the enchanted and uncanny world of stories and beliefs that Bengalis like myself grew up in." - Amitav Ghosh "This strikingly original study returns ghosts, long unjustly neglected, back to their rightful place at the heart of the history of Bengali colonial modernity. By a fascinating series of literary, historical, and theoretical analyses, it reveals colonial reason's obsession with the irrational and presents the narrative of replacement of decorous magical ghosts of premodernity by new forms of the uncanny and monstrous lodged in the disenchanted structures of capitalist economies and modern nation-states." - Sudipta Kaviraj, Professor of Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies, Columbia University