Satyajit Ray, The Inner Eye: The Biography of a Master Film-Maker [Paperback]

"...Ray has been blessed with an excellent biography by Andrew Robinson, first out in 1989 and now published in a second edition which covers the director's death in 1992. Ray described himself as a "combined product of East and West", and it is in coming to grips with these twin influences that Robinson succeeds. He teases out the strands of religious and artistic Bengali life that shaped Ray. Robinson knew Ray during the director's final decade, and quotes from numerous interviews while offering a studious analysis of each film." -Chris Wood, The Times "Andrew Robinson's biography of India's best-known filmmaker will remain the most detailed, and the seminal work on the life, times and oeuvre of Satyajit Ray". -Chitralekha Basu, The Times Literary Supplement

Satyajit Ray's films include the "Apu" trilogy, "The Music Room", "Charulata", "Days and Nights in the Forest", "The Chess Players" and "The Stranger". He also made comedies, musicals, detective films and documentaries. Beginning with the classic "Pather Panchali" in 1955, Ray was an exceptionally versatile artist who won almost every major prize in cinema, including the Oscar for lifetime achievement just before his death in 1992. Akira Kurosawa said of him "Not to have seen the cinema of Ray means existing in the world without seeing the sun or the moon". This is a definitive biography of this movie giant, based on extensive interviews with Ray himself, his actors and collaborators, and a deep knowledge of Bengali culture. Revised and updated following Ray's death, the book covers his final films and his artistic legacy and includes a comprehensive bibliography of Ray's writings.

Andrew Robinson is the author of more than a dozen books, including several acclaimed works on Rabindranath Tagore (written with Krishna Dutta), and the editor of three screenplays by Satyajit Ray. He is literary editor of The Times Higher Education Supplement.