Readers of Puja specials of CPM publications like Ganashakti, Desh-hitoishi and Nandan will be denied an opportunity to read pieces by a prolific contributor this year as the man is busy fine-tuning a new book on the rise and fall of the Third Reich.

After contributing regularly — over 150 pieces — to puja numbers since 1969, Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee seems to have set a bigger target this autumn, dedicating all his energies to a book titled Nazi Germanyr Jonmo O Mrityu (The Birth and Death of Nazi Germany).

The former Bengal chief minister did not write pieces for the Puja editions last year too because he had by then made up his mind on penning this book and started his research, said a source.

Although the book, according to sources, will be a treatise on the history of Germany from the early 1930s till the end of World War II — one of Bhattacharjee’s favourite areas of history — sources said there are chances the current political landscape in India and Bengal would also find a mention.

“He firmly believes in the “Fascist” qualities of both the Narendra Modi government at the Centre and the Mamata Banerjee government in Bengal… So, if he is writing on Germany under Adolf Hitler, he is likely to draw parallels with today’s India and Bengal,” said a source. The National Book Agency will publish the book over the next few days, ahead of Puja.

“The publishers are planning to launch Buddhada’s new book on Nazi Germany over the next few days and it will be available at the party’s bookstalls outside pandals,” said CPM state committee member Avik Dutta, the editor of party mouthpiece Ganashakti.

Dutta said Bhattacharjee — the poster boy of the Marxists in Bengal — has been working on the book for over a year. “This book would have come out sooner but got delayed by several months because of his ill health,” Dutta told The Telegraph.

The 74-year-old former chief minister has been suffering from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and has not been leaving his two-bedroom ground floor flat at Calcutta’s 59A Palm Avenue for some time. He stepped down from the CPM state committee — the last body he was formally part of — in March this year.

“This could well be his defining work as an author,” said central committee member Rabin Deb.

The last published article by Bhattacharjee in any CPM publication was for Ganashakti last year, for the bicentennial of Karl Marx’s birth.

Bhattacharjee’s first-ever published piece was for Juboshokti, the youth wing’s mouthpiece, in 1969. It was titled Vietnamer Jubo Somaj (The Youth of Vietnam) during the Vietnam War.

His most controversial article, titled Dushomoy (Bad times) and critical of the Jyoti Basu government, was published in the Ganashakti Puja number of 1993, soon after he had walked out of the cabinet over differences with the Marxist patriarch.

Ahead of the 2011 Assembly polls that toppled the Bhattacharjee-led Left Front government, he had penned a piece for the 2010 Ganashakti Puja edition titled Shomoy Kothin, Mokabilao Shombhob (The Times are Tough, but Resistance too is Possible).