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Tree Without Roots is the English translation/transcreation of Syed Waliullah's classic novel Lal Shalu. With no land or skills to support himself otherwise, Majeed preys upon the simple rural folk by exploiting religion, becoming the self-appointed guardian of a mazar, which he claims is that of a saint. Not satisfied with his first wife, he marries again, this time a woman who is not as amenable as his loving first wife. The portrait of the two women and their ...
Bengal Raag is a wonderful book about twin sisters and their childhood in Bangladesh, formerly known as East Pakistan. A blend of fiction and real life, it chronicles an important moment in the history of that region. Although seen through the eyes of children, it deals with adult and complex issues of family dynamics, belonging and separation amidst a gradual building up of social, cultural and political tensions. Taught at home by their mother, Diya and Gaity ...
The eight stories included in Uneven Octagon cover three continents: North America, Europe, and Asia. Excepting one, they all deal with expatriates from South Asia interacting with each other and with white and black British and Americans in varied settings and situations. The exception, "Angst and Ennui", is a fictionalized account of a young man's travails in the suffocating atmosphere of occupied Dhaka in 1971 and attempts to capture, in a microcosm, ...
In spite of being a global community of people, Muslims tend to be dismissed as peripheral if not actually injurious to modern civilization. The community as a whole is generally represented in the west as uninspired, unproductive, inflexible and violent. In serious, intellectual encounters, Muslims add up to only a marginal presence. The writer attempts to counteract these perceptions by analyzing the specific nature of such representations and exploring the ...
Khondakar Ashraf Hossain is perhaps the finest poetic voice to have come out of Bangladesh since it won independence in 1971. This volume contains poems that cover a period of creativity extending over almost three decades. Ashraf Hossain's poetry is deeply concerned with the celebration of his motherland, its myths and metonymies, its political and social exigencies. But he also traverses the grounds of existentialist philosophy and mysticism quite often, as he ...
This book collects essays spawned directly or indirectly by England's overseas ventures. Beginning with an essay that traces Bacon's influence on English colonization and the impact of his thought on English imperialism, it focuses on proponents of empire such as Daniel Defoe and opponents of the excesses of empire building such as Burke. It includes discussions of the writings of English women and men in British India such as the relatively unknown Eliza Fay and ...
Culled from the early writings of Abul Hussain, who is recognized as the first modern Bengali poet in Bangladesh, these poems, translated by Syed Sajjad Hussain, provide a glimpse into the essence of his poetry--urbanity, wit and satire, colloquial style and a toughness of texture. No effort has been made to convey the singularity of his diction and the expertise of his metrical and rhyming innovations, which distinguish him most from his contemporaries, since ...
Give a woman a comb and a mirror - and a little leisure - and she will arrange her hair, perhaps put kajal in her eyes, a tip on her forehead, or a touch of read on her lips. Whom is she beautifying herself for? Her lover or her husband? Or is she looking at the woman she sees in the mirror? And is she pleased with what she sees? The twenty stories in this collection from Indian and Bangladeshi writers show women their own faces. Separated by language, by food, ...
The poems in this collection have been written over a span of twenty-five years and mark the rites of passage from girlhood to womanhood. Inspired by the joys and pains of roles that women play, each bringing with it a new face to wear, the volume is a reflection of the timeless experience of womanhood symbolised by a common ancestor "Eve". The poems are wry, ironic, rueful, sometimes sad and sometimes playful. Women's art, whether literature or ...