The Bioscope Man

The Bioscope Man is about the recollections of Abani Chatterjee, a washed-out silent-era movie actor, who, through this book, makes a bid to convince the reader that misfortune and bad taste of the times conspired to turn him into a non-entity.

• Tarini Chatterjee: Abani's father, a senior clerk at East Indian Railway.
• Shabitri Chatterjee: Abani's mother, a housewife.
• Adela Quested: Daughter of Tarini's boss at Great Eastern Railway, Edward Quested
• Shombhu Lahiri (Shombhu-mama): Abani's uncle, chief projectionist at the Elphinstone theatre, who introduces him to the bioscope world.
• Durga Devi/Felicia Miller: Actress who would co-star in bioscopes with Abani.
• Lalji Hemraj: Businessman who starts the Alochhaya Theatre and Bioscope Company.
• Fritz Lang: Austrian filmmaker who comes from Berlin to Calcutta to make his 'India film'.
• William Jones: 18th century English scholar of ancient Indian texts and founder of the Asiatic Society.
• Ramlochan Sharma: Sanskrit and grammar tutor to William Jones.
• Anna Maria Jones: Wife of William Jones.
• Kuli: Girl who conducts daily chores for Ramlochan.

The Bioscope Man was well received by critics across India. In a piece published on 12 June 2009, India Today wrote: "What lies behind the screen? — journalist and novelist Indrajit Hazra’s The Bioscope Man sneaks us adroitly past the cameras of the silent film industry and exposes with a wacky and trenchant black humour the bathos, the pathos and the incredible magic of the moving image in the heart of Bengali-land about a hundred years ago."[4]

Hindustan Times praised the novel on June 2, 2008. In a piece entitled "The truth will set you free," the paper wrote: "Hazra has comic flair, heavily underlined by black humour. The funnier bits often come as asides, almost as if they were being spoken from the corner of his mouth."[5]

The Book Review magazine praised Hazra's craft of telling a powerful story and his use of English language in a creative and artistic manner. [6]

The French translation of the novel was reviewed on the La PAL D'Heclea literary blog.[7]

Indrajit Hazra also published The Burnt Forehead of Max Saul (Ravi Dayal Publisher, 2000) and The Garden of Earthly Delights (India Ink, 2003). Both novels were also translated into French.[8]