Kanakalata is a novel published in 1925 about social realism

Social realism

Social Realism, also known as Socio-Realism, is an artistic movement, expressed in the visual and other realist arts, which depicts social and racial injustice, economic hardship, through unvarnished pictures of life's struggles; often depicting working class activities as heroic...

. A substantial part of this novel was actually published in serialized form in Utkal Sahitya in 1913 and was widely acclaimed by the readers.

Plot

The plot of the novel centres round two pairs of lovers: Dhananjay and Kanakalata whose love-at-first-sight culminates in marriage after overcoming the hurdle of dowry dispute, Rajendra and a child-widow named Uma whose passion and love for each other remain unfulfilled with Uma's death and Rajendra renouncing the world and turning into a sanyasi. The plot is in fact an indictment of the evils of dowry system in rural aristocratic society and the predicament of the child-widows who were condemned into a life of anguish and suffering.

The novelist's zeal for social reforms is clearly evident in the language and plot-structure of the novel. The novel also portrays a realistic image of the typical landscape and lifestyle of rural Orissa

Orissa

Orissa , officially Odisha since Nov 2011, is a state of India, located on the east coast of India, by the Bay of Bengal. It is the modern name of the ancient nation of Kalinga, which was invaded by the Maurya Emperor Ashoka in 261 BC. The modern state of Orissa was established on 1 April...

in the early decades of the twentieth century.