The Last Poem

An intensely romantic story that unfolds in the beautiful hill station of Shillong in north-eastern India, The Last Poem (Shesher Kavita) is considered by many to be Rabindranath Tagore's finest prose work. Amit Ray travels to Shillong to escape from the drudgery of his middle-class existence, and finds himself ensnared instead in a web of passion andpoetry with the elegant and enigmatic Lavanya.

As the protagonists grow closer to each other in this unconventional love story, they also discover themselves - their strengths, their ambitions, their flaws, their follies.

Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941) was a Nobel Laureate in literature. (1913). He wrote successfully in all literary genres, but was, first and foremost, a poet, publishing more than fifty volumes of poetry. He wrote novels, plays, musical dramas, dance dramas, essays, travel diaries and two autobiographies. He also left numerous drawings and paintings, and songs for which he wrote the music himself. He was the composer of the national anthem of independent India and Bangladesh. He was born in Calcutta, travelled around the world, and was knighted in 1915. He gave up his knighthood after the Jallianwala Bagh massacre in 1919.

Among his many works are Manasi (1890), Sonar Tari (1894), Gitanjali (1910), Gitimalya (1914), Balaka (1916), The Gardener (1913), Fruit-Gathering (1916), The Fugitive (1921), Raja (1910), Dakghar (1912), Achalayatan (1912), Muktadhara (1922), Raktakaravi (1926), Gora (1910), Ghare-Baire (1916) and Yogayog (1929).