Bengal Nights

Set in 1930s Calcutta, this semiautobiographical novel by the world-renowned scholar Mircea Eliade details the passionate love affair of Alain, a young French engineer, and Maitreyi, the daughter of his Indian employer. At once horrifying and deeply moving, Bengal Nights is also a cruel account of the wreckage left in the wake of a young man's self-discovery. Over forty years passed before the real Maitreyi Devi read Eliade's erotically charged novel and wrote her response, It Does Not Die.