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Synopsis It is not often that in telling the simple story of an Oriya village girl’s journey from innocence to experience a novel manages to unlock the deep-lying sources of the malaise of the contemporary Oriya society. This is what kunti kuntala shakuntala, the first published novel be the acclaimed Oriya writer Binapani Mohanty, does with a certain aplomb. The novel gives an insight into the commodification that is a woman’s historical condition. It augments that critical vision by showing the complicity of the mythical icons of Indian womanhood such as Kunti,Draupadi and Shakuntala in that condition. One can in fact underline another aspect of the novel’s appeal, which is its echoing of the theme of Thomas Hardy’s Tess in the story of Kunti, pulled as she is between an Alec-like sensualist and an Angel-like romanticist.