The Dead Fish, translated by Mahua Sen from Rajkamal Choudhary's seminal Hindi novel Machhli Mari Hui, brings a significant work of Hindi literature to English-language readers for the first time. Published by Rupa Publications, the novel offers a psychologically intense exploration of sexual orientation, identity, desire and emotional instability against the backdrop of mid-20th-century Kolkata.

At the centre of the novel is Nirmal Padmavat, a ruthless businessman whose inner life is marked by contradictions, volatility and an inability to reconcile different aspects of his identity. His relationships with Shirin, Priya and Kalyani expose an increasingly fractured psychological landscape shaped by longing, detachment, confusion and destructive behaviour.

Through unconventional storytelling, lyrical prose and multiple interwoven subplots, Rajkamal Choudhary confronts subjects that were particularly daring for his time. The result is a challenging literary work that examines sexuality and identity while also exposing the social pressures and emotional consequences surrounding them.

Book Summary

The Dead Fish is set in mid-20th-century Kolkata and revolves around the troubled inner world of Nirmal Padmavat.

Nirmal is a successful and ruthless businessman, but his personal relationships reveal a very different and deeply unstable dimension of his personality. His sexuality, desires and emotional attachments remain entangled in contradictions that he struggles to understand or resolve.

His relationships with Shirin, Priya and Kalyani become central to the novel's psychological exploration. Shirin and Priya are queer characters whose presence forms part of the complex emotional and psychological network surrounding Nirmal. His relationship with Kalyani, meanwhile, exposes the destructive consequences of his inability to establish healthy emotional connections.

The novel does not offer a straightforward journey towards resolution. Instead, it presents identity and desire as fragmented, conflicted and deeply affected by the social environment in which its characters exist.

The recurring metaphor of the dead fish becomes a powerful image for barrenness, entanglement and unfulfilled desire, reinforcing the novel's atmosphere of emotional stagnation and disconnection.

What Makes The Dead Fish Different?

One of the most striking aspects of The Dead Fish is the historical context in which its themes were explored.

Rajkamal Choudhary placed homosexuality and queer identity at the forefront of a major literary work at a time when such subjects were rarely treated with comparable directness in mainstream Indian literature.

The novel's treatment of sexuality is not simplistic or idealised. Instead, it presents identity as something deeply entangled with desire, social expectations, psychological conflict and relationships.

This complexity is central to the book's literary power.

The novel also refuses to follow a conventional narrative structure. Its unconventional and experimental writing style, lyrical prose and interwoven subplots create a fragmented reading experience that reflects the psychological fragmentation of its central character.

Themes in The Dead Fish

Sexual Orientation and Identity

Sexual identity is one of the novel's defining concerns.

Rajkamal Choudhary brings homosexuality into the narrative with a directness that was striking for its era. The presence of queer characters such as Priya and Shirin allows the novel to examine sexuality within a wider landscape of emotional and social conflict.

Rather than treating identity as a simple category, the novel explores the tensions that emerge when desire, social expectations and personal understanding collide.

Psychological Fragmentation

Nirmal Padmavat's character provides the novel with its psychological centre.

His contradictory desires and unstable relationships reveal a personality struggling with conflicting impulses. He appears caught between longing and detachment, idealisation and confusion, and between the desire for connection and an inability to establish healthy emotional intimacy.

The novel's fragmented structure reinforces this psychological complexity.

Desire and Detachment

Desire in The Dead Fish is rarely presented as uncomplicated.

Characters are drawn towards one another while simultaneously remaining emotionally distant. Relationships become spaces of longing, confusion and conflict rather than straightforward sources of fulfilment.

This tension contributes to the novel's persistent atmosphere of emotional unease.

Social Norms and Repression

The novel also examines the influence of social expectations on individual identity.

By bringing queer identity and sexuality into the foreground, Rajkamal Choudhary challenges the norms surrounding what can be openly acknowledged or discussed.

The resulting conflict between individual desire and societal expectations forms an important part of the book's continuing relevance.

The Metaphor of the Dead Fish

The title itself carries considerable symbolic weight.

The dead fish evokes ideas of barrenness, enmeshment and desires that remain unfulfilled. It becomes an image through which the novel's emotional world can be understood: something that once possessed movement and life has become trapped in stillness.

The metaphor resonates with the characters' inability to escape destructive emotional patterns and the broader social constraints surrounding them.

An Unconventional Literary Structure

The novel's experimental quality is closely connected to its subject matter.

Rather than presenting Nirmal's world through a simple linear progression, Rajkamal Choudhary uses lyrical passages, layered subplots and psychological shifts to create a more fragmented narrative.

This approach allows the form of the novel to mirror its concerns.

Identity itself is fragmented. Desire is contradictory. Relationships overlap and become difficult to categorise. The narrative consequently reflects the instability experienced by its characters.

The literary references associated with Nirmal—including comparisons with Goethe's Mephisto, Shakespeare's Othello and Brontë's Heathcliff—also position him within a broader tradition of morally and psychologically complex literary figures.

The Significance of Mahua Sen's Translation

Bringing Machhli Mari Hui into English is significant because it opens a major work of Hindi literature to readers who may not have encountered the original.

Mahua Sen's translation makes this complex literary work accessible to a wider readership while carrying across its central concerns of identity, sexuality, psychological conflict and social convention.

Translation in this context becomes more than a linguistic exercise. It creates a bridge between a work rooted in a particular literary and cultural context and a contemporary international readership.

The publication of The Dead Fish in English by Rupa Publications therefore gives the novel an opportunity to enter new literary conversations around queer writing, identity, Indian literature and experimental fiction.

Writing Style

Rajkamal Choudhary's writing in The Dead Fish is lyrical, unconventional and experimental.

The novel's subplots are intricately woven together, creating a layered narrative in which psychological states and relationships constantly intersect.

Its prose contributes to the emotional atmosphere of the work rather than simply advancing its plot. The result is a literary experience that demands attention to implication, metaphor and character psychology.

The novel's unconventional approach is particularly suited to its subject because the fractured narrative mirrors the fractured identities and relationships at its centre.

About the Author and Translator

Mahua Sen is a writer, poet, translator and management professional based in Hyderabad. Her literary work spans poetry, translation and essays, with her writing appearing in literary journals, newspapers and more than seventy anthologies.

Her translation of The Dead Fish, the English rendition of Rajkamal Choudhary's Machhli Mari Hui, has received critical recognition from scholars, critics and readers. The book was nominated for the VOW Book Awards, shortlisted for the Banaras Lit Fest Book Awards, and received the Akshara Award. It was also listed among the Best Books of 2025 in the Translated Fiction category by Aaj Tak/Sahitya Tak.

As a poet, Mahua is the author of Nostalgia: Crafting a Home Within, published by Red River. The collection became an Amazon bestseller at #1 and received the Maharshi Ved Vyas International Award for Poetry.

Through her work as a translator, Mahua Sen continues to bring literary works across languages to wider audiences while contributing to contemporary literary conversations through her poetry and essays.

The original author, Rajkamal Choudhary, is represented in this English edition through a work that has retained its provocative literary character across languages and generations.

Who Should Read The Dead Fish?

The Dead Fish may particularly appeal to:

• Readers interested in significant works of Hindi literature
• Those exploring Indian literary translations
• Readers interested in queer literature and representations of sexuality
• Students and scholars of Indian literature
• Readers drawn to psychologically complex fiction
• Those interested in experimental and unconventional narrative styles
• Readers exploring themes of identity, desire and social repression
• Anyone interested in the literary treatment of difficult and controversial subjects

Because of its psychologically intense themes and disturbing elements, the novel is best suited to mature readers prepared to engage critically with complex representations of sexuality, violence, identity and emotional turmoil.

Conclusion

The Dead Fish is a challenging and significant literary work that confronts sexuality, identity, desire and psychological conflict with remarkable directness.

Rajkamal Choudhary's decision to place homosexuality and queer identity within the centre of his narrative gives the novel particular historical significance, while its experimental structure and recurring metaphors give it continuing literary relevance.

Mahua Sen's English translation brings this provocative work of Hindi literature to a new readership. In doing so, The Dead Fish enters contemporary conversations about queer identity, literary representation and the relationship between individual desire and social norms.

The novel is not an easy or comforting exploration of these subjects. Its characters are deeply flawed, its relationships often disturbing, and its emotional landscape deliberately unsettled. Yet that very discomfort forms part of its literary purpose.

For readers interested in Indian literature, literary translation, queer themes, psychological fiction and experimental storytelling, The Dead Fish offers an intense encounter with a work that continues to provoke questions about identity, desire and the pressures imposed by society.