# Battles of Our Own

Canonical: https://www.bookquiver.com/jagadish-mohanty/battles-of-our-own/9780143451747

![Battles of Our Own](https://quivercdn.com/covers/india-penguin-modern-classics/jagadish-mohanty/battles-of-our-own_978-01-4345-174-7.jpg?v=2026-08-06%2021%3A04%3A33)

- Book: [Battles of Our Own](https://www.bookquiver.com/jagadish-mohanty/battles-of-our-own) ([Battles of Our Own.md](https://www.bookquiver.com/jagadish-mohanty/battles-of-our-own.md))
- Authors: [Jagadish Mohanty](https://www.bookquiver.com/jagadish-mohanty)
- Publisher: india_penguin_modern_classics
- ISBN: 978-01-4345-174-7
- Pages: 272
- Published: 2022-04-01
- Language: en_IN
- Binding: Softcover

## Description

An Indian ‘industrial novel’ from the winner of the 1990 Odisha Sahitya Akademi Award Jagadish Mohanty’s Battles of Our Own is a rare work of modern Odia and Indian fiction. It seeks to delineate a world that is off the grid. Its action unfolds in the remote and non-descript Tarbahar Colliery-a fictional name for the over hundred-year-old open-cast Himgiri Rampur coal mine in the hinterland of western Odisha. A work of gritty realism in its portrayal of a dark and dangerous underworld where coal is extracted, the novel poignantly reveals the primeval struggle between man and brute nature. Offering a complete experience of the ‘industrial novel’-face offs between trade unions and management, trade union rivalry, and clandestine deals between enemy camps-this work brings alive Mohanty’s literary genius, which takes us to a world beyond the simplistic binary division between the worker and the master. The novel unravels a complex, fractious, and nuanced picture of the human condition. This sensitive and evocative rendering by Himansu S. Mohapatra and Paul St-Pierre captures the thrill, beauty, horror and tragedy of this fictional tour de force.