[1][2][3] The principal character of the series is Animesh Mitra who, much like the author himself, grows up amid the tea estates of the Dooars in northern Bengal, but then moves to Kolkata in the 1960s in order to study at Scottish Church College.
Through the character of the protagonist, Majumdar portrays the tumultuous political history of West Bengal in the post-independence era.
Kalbela was serialized in the prestigious literary magazine Desh in 1981-1982, and won the Sahitya Akademi Prize in 1984.
The last book in the series Mousholkal was published in 2013, after a gap of nearly 25 years,[4] as a response to the rise of Mamata Banerjee and the Trinamool Congress.
Kalbela was filmed as Kaalbela by the director Goutam Ghose in 2009 with Parambrata Chattopadhyay in the role of Animesh and Paoli Dam as Madhabilata.