In the mid-1990s, Prasenjit Gupta came across a story by award-winning author Ashapurna Debi in an anthology of short fiction by Bengali writers. Gupta was mesmerized by Debi’s prose and knew he eventually wanted to bring her stories to a wider audience. The result is Brahma’s Weapon, a dazzling collection of 21 stories that Gupta translated into English.

Born in 1909, Debi was a novelist, poet, and short story writer who penned intimate narratives about family life in Calcutta (now Kolkata), the capital city in the eastern Indian state of West Bengal. To say Debi was prolific is an understatement. In a literary career that spanned over half a century, she penned some 100 novels and countless stories. Her spare, intense, and economical writing provides a snapshot of interior spaces to reveal provocative truths about humanity. Though Debi grew up in an ultraconservative family, her work challenges the social conventions that constrict women’s education, autonomy, and freedom. “Her stories are often brief and deceptively simple,” says Gupta over email, “but they mine the depths of their characters, revealing the sharp edges and secret desires that make us all who we are.”

This is one reason why Jhumpa Lahiri, a Bengali American, has such a great appreciation for her work. Lahiri completed her master’s thesis on Debi’s stories in 1995, the same year Debi passed away at the age of 86. An excerpt from Lahiri’s thesis, which provides the social and literary context in which Debi worked, serves as a stirring introduction to Brahma’s Weapon. Among other things, Lahiri praises her fiction as “conspicuously stamped with an inimitable voice and vision” in a “laconic, concentrated, yet whimsical style.”

Too few of Debi’s stories have been translated into English, says Gupta, because critics and translators assume that the stories’ subject matter and setting, the trials and tribulations of day-to-day life in Bengali households, would be of limited interest to readers. But the themes the author meticulously parses—oppression, struggle, heartache, victory, and defeat—are universal, says Gupta. One favorite story of his, “Neejer Jonno Shok,” or “Grieving for Oneself,” illustrates these themes to perfection. It’s about Obinash, an elderly man who is immobilized in bed with chest pain. He receives the attention of his self-absorbed family members only when death seems to be knocking on his door. But after they conclude that what ails him is only heartburn, they abandon Obinash to his shoe box–sized room. He concludes, reluctantly, that only death would deem him relevant to his loved ones. “In one brief scene, Ashapurna fully demonstrates this character’s sense of his entire worth,” says Gupta. “It’s an unforgettable story.”

Gupta, a native Bengali speaker, was born in Calcutta and grew up in Delhi. His work in translation found its footing at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where he also penned his own short stories. Gupta went on to complete his Ph.D, and for his dissertation, he translated Hindi author Nirmal Verma’s stories. His passion for the process has continued to blossom. “You get to think about every sentence, every word choice, and you realize how much care the author has taken to make the story what it is,” he says.“Translation helps me understand how the masters practice their craft, the shape and slant they give to a story, and in closely watching these masters at work, so to speak, I hope to learn what makes their writing so truly profound.”

In Brahma’s Weapon, Gupta painstakingly preserves idioms and metaphors in Bengali culture and stays as close to the authentic meaning in the language as possible. In the story “Shadowsun,” the phrase “matha kata jaoa”—literally, to have one’s head be cut off—means to be greatly ashamed or disgraced. Gupta captures the literal rendering of the phrase and then adds a brief explanation: “Her rudeness leaves me headless, the shame of it.” He also plays with tense in English in order to more accurately reflect the tone and nature of the Bengali narrative.

Gupta’s decision to self-publish was deliberate. “Getting a book of translated stories published here in the U.S., especially by an author who writes in a little-known language, was almost impossible at the time,” he says. “We still seem to lag behind other countries in making literature in translation available to readers here.”

The tide seems to be slowly turning, though. In January, Parabaas, a small New Jersey press for Bengali literature, published Gupta’s translation of Rabindranath Tagore’s renowned poetry collection, Gitanjali. “Tagore’s English can sometimes sound dated to the modern ear,” says Gupta. “There have been other translations, but I wanted to translate the poems myself as a native speaker of Bengali.”

Translation is something he hopes to pursue long term. “For me, it is a source of great joy, the closest form of reading. It always delights me to think that in my small way,” Gupta says, “I’ve helped this wonderful work find a few more readers.”

Anjali Enjeti is the author of a novel, The Parted Earth, and an essay collection, Southbound.