A prolific writer of sixteen novels and over two hundred short stories, Bandyopadhyay is best known for his extraordinary humanist novels Pather Panchali (The Song of the Road) and its sequel, Aparajito (The Unvanquished), which were filmed as a stunning trilogy –the Apu Trilogy– by the Bengali auteur Satyajit Ray. Bandyopadhyay wrote movingly and lyrically about the grim struggles of individuals in both villages and cities, always investing his characters with qualities that enabled their quests to rise above the heartbreaking circumstances in which they lived.