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.