Bengali writer Sunil Gangopadhyay's death prompts rich tributes

NEW DELHI // Tributes poured in yesterday for the prolific writer and intellectual Sunil Gangopadhyay, who died in Kolkata after suffering a heart attack. He was 78.

The author of more than 200 books, Gangopadhyay won several literary prizes, including India's Sahitya Akademi Award in 1985.

He worked in almost all areas of Bengali literature, including novels, poetry, children's fiction, literary criticism and essays.

In the 1950s, Gangopadhyay and some of his friends founded the seminal poetry magazine Krittibas, which published only poems by writers who had yet to establish themselves and became a platform for experimenting with the craft.

The celebrated novelist Amitav Ghosh, a fellow Bengali, offered a passionate tribute to Gangopadhyay, whom he described as "a great writer and a warm, kind and generous man".

Mr Ghosh said Gangopadhyay had been a mainstay of life in Kolkata, where he had nurtured a "cosmopolitan literary culture where no one needed to feel excluded".

India's president, Pranab Mukherjee, described Gangopadhyay as one of the finest intellectuals of his generation, who had "enriched Bengali literature through his unique style".