Satyjit 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, musical fantasies, detective films, and documentaries. He was an exceptionally versatile artist who won almost every major prize in cinema, including a lifetime achievement Oscar in 1992. This is the best-known biography of the film giant, based on extensive interviews with Ray himself, his actors, collaborators, and a deep knowledge of Bengali culture. This second edition contains extensive new material covering Ray's final three films made in 1989-1991, a discussion of his artistic legacy, and the most comprehensive bibliography of Ray's own writings.

Andrew Robinson has written more than twenty-five books on an unusual range of subjects: science and the history of science; ancient scripts, writing systems and archaeological decipherment; and Indian history and culture. They include six biographies: of the physicist Albert Einstein and the polymath Thomas Young; of the decipherers Jean-Francois Champollion (Egyptian hieroglyphs) and Michael Ventris (Minoan Linear B); and of the Indian writer Rabindranath Tagore and the Indian film director Satyajit Ray. His most recent books, The Indus: Lost Civilizations, and the wide-ranging Earth-Shattering Events: Earthquakes, Nations and Civilization, combine his interest in archaeology, history, India and science. He also writes on these subjects for leading magazines, such as Nature and Science. See http://andrew-robinson.org/