Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941) is the greatest writer of the Bengali language and the most significant Indian literary figure. This mystical poet, prose writer, philosopher, playwright, composer, painter and the first winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature outside of the European continent, wrote approximately 90 short stories during his lifetime, and the book Hungry Stones and Other Stories, first published in 1916 in English translation, contains a total of 13 stories, written in the period between the 1890s and 1910s. All 13 short stories are characterized by an elevated tone of the imaginative and spiritual, given through a discreet combination of beauty and truth. Through everyday Indian life, Tagore lyrically evokes his own deep understanding of the greatest human tragedies and truths in society. The stories range from fanciful fairy tales, to those about ghosts, criticism of the caste system in India, dialogues with the otherworldly, problematization of the relationship between Indians and Anglo-Indians, records of the absence of companionship in surviving devastating human tragedies, to issues of confused identity and melodramatic observations of husband-wife and mother-child relationships. With the book The Hungry Stones and Other Stories, this representative of Indian Romanticism confirmed himself as a skilled master of the written word, who successfully elevated the Bengali and Indian short story to the level of a serious art form.