Pratibha Ray has written a brilliant novel around the fascinating character of Draupadi. In the novel, Draupadi not
only remains anchored in the epic but also rises out of its pages to become our contemporary and extremely relevant to our times.
– Sitakanta Mohapatra, eminent Indian Poet
Among the contemporary fiction writers from Odisha, Pratibha Ray is the best known voice. She is one of the major fiction writers in India. Ray excels in the leisurely unfolding of the drama and human emotions in her short stories and novels… The focus of attention in the bulk of these realistic works is not on the ‘happening’ though there is the inevitable tour de force in many novels especially in short stories, as in the best of Chekhov or O ‘Henry.
– Sachidananda Mohanty, Academic and critic.
The novel Magnamati creates the poetry of the earth in the language of the fisherfolk of Erasama. The unsophisticated and colloquial vocabulary is woven into a new paradigm of life where the rivers, trees, fish, nets, rituals and pain, hunger horror and helplessness intone the native language of the earth. Magnamati is, perhaps, the greatest earth novel written in any language in the world and, by God, it is a masterpiece.
– Prafulla Mohanty, eminent critic.
Ullanghan, the award-winning collection of 21 short stories, is noted for the deft handling of human frailties with compassion and a unique world-view. The author has succeeded in maintaining a fine balance between the literary and the colloquial. Her observations on human nature, on moments of man’s transgression of moral limits, are poignantly put down in an effective blend of detachment and empathy. The work is considered a worthy contribution to Indian short fiction in Odia.
– Sahitya Akademi Award Citation, 2000
I have just finished reading Pradip Bhattacharya’s English translation of the Odia Book “Yajnaseni” by the famed writer Pratibha Ray. If women can be educated and modern without losing their cultural identity, then Pratibha Ray sets an excellent example.
– Sooraj in India.