Pather Panchali deals with the life of the Roy family, consisting of Harihar, Sarbajaya, Apu and Durga, both in their ancestral village Nishchindipur in rural Bengal and later when they move to Varanasi in search of a better life, as well as the anguish and loss they face during their travels.

It first appeared as a serial in a Calcutta periodical in 1928 and was published as a book the next year; it was the first published novel written by the author. It was followed in 1932 by a sequel Aparajito, which was later also adapted into a film of the same name by Satyajit Ray

Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay : (12 September 1894 – 1 November 1950) was an Indian Bengali author, and one of the leading writers of modern Bengali literature. His best known work is the autobiographical novel, Pather Panchali (The Song of the Road). He was posthumously awarded the Rabindra Puraskar in 1951, the most prestigious literary award in West Bengal, for his novel Ichhamati.