Page "Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay" Paragraph 12

Pather Panchali is considered Bibhutibhushan's masterpiece and is included in the CBSE syllabus for students choosing to study Bengali.

Author Humayun Azad opined that the novel form of Pather Panchali is superior to its cinematic rendition.

Azad's view is not necessarily a commonly held one in the West, though, as the Apu Trilogy is considered among the finest films in the history of cinema — the unavailability of a complete English translation of the novel means that English-speaking audiences have difficulty engaging with the debate ( the available translation by T. W. Clark and Tarapada Mukherji is a truncated version ).

However, in the Bengali-speaking world, the stature of the novel is not contested.