Bangladeshi Literature

K

kpjayan

Reader
I had the privilege of meeting Our Fellow member Humayun, a couple of days back here in Bangalore. We had some great discussion in general about books and in particular about the writing / Literary scene in Bangladesh. I have requested him to enlighten us here in detail. This is to get him started.

He had also 'gifted' me with two books from the Bangladesh, which I intend to start reading immediately. "Two Novellas" by Syed Shamsul Haq and "12 stories" by Hasan Azizul Haq. Both these books are published from 'Dhaka Translation Center's 'Library of Bangladesh' series.

The only prominent name for us, is Taslima Nasrin and I am not sure people know beyond that about the Bangladeshi writing. I've read Tahmima Anam's books, but that is more English than Bangladeshi.

As an outsider, I can imagine Bangladesh as a very 'fertile' land for great literature. The beauty of the language itself ( Bangla, divided between two countries which gave us some of the big names in Indian Literature like Tagore, Tarashankar Banerjee, Bibhutibhushan Bandopadhyay...), The Geographial/Natural positioning ( Two of the Largest River , Brahmaputra & Ganges, merge in its land) , the socio-political and Religious undercurrents, the 1971 independence etc..


To start with here is an article from NewAge today. http://www.newagebd.net/article/68696/our-literature-must-reflect-our-lives-mohammad-rafiq

‘Our literature must absolve itself of foreign influences regarding both content and form. Otherwise, we will produce just echo-literature which will not reflect our lives and reality,’
 
SpaceCadet

SpaceCadet

Quiet Reader
Re: Bangladesh Literature

Thanks Jayan. As I see it, Bangladeshi literature is relatively unknown in the English world. As for myself I've read only one book few years back 'Lifelines: New Writing from Bangladesh', a collection of short stories (edited by Farah Guznavi), but if I remember well, most were originally written in English by expat writers. I was not much impressed by it. Searching led me to a Special issue of the Wasafiri magazine (number 84) which was dedicated to Bangladeshi Literature. It was an interesting starting point for me. If that can be of interest to anyone here, I think it can be ordered online from the magazine website.
 
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tiganeasca

tiganeasca

Moderator
For what it's worth, World Literature Today published an entire issue devoted to Bangladeshi lit in 2013. How good it was, I am not qualified to say, though I will say that their stuff is generally excellent. In any event, there is a brief intro for the issue at https://www.worldliteraturetoday.org/2013/may/bangladesh-world-stage-introduction-david-shook.
The portion of that issue devoted to Bangladeshi lit had the following table of contents:

Bangladesh on the World Stage
  • INTRO Bangladesh on the World Stage: An Introduction
    by David Shook
  • INTERVIEW “Opening Bangladesh to the World: A Conversation with Four Contemporary Writers” by David Shook
  • EXCERPT The World in My Hands by K. Anis Ahmed
  • POETRY Two Poems from the Chakma by Sudipta Chakma Mikado
  • MEMOIR “The Three Stages of Separation” by Maria Chaudhuri
  • FICTION WEB EXCLUSIVE Beloved Rongomala (an excerpt)
    by Shaheen Akhtar
 
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Bagharu

Bagharu

Reader
Akhtaruzzaman Elias is widely and rightly considered as one of the greatest writers of Bangladesh. He used to say he was a fulltime reader and a parttime writer. He wrote only two novels, not more than 30 short stories, and published a collection of essays. There's almost no translation available of his works, though recently some works are going on. Arunava Sinha is working on Khwabnama's translation, last year when we met in Bangalore, I told Jayan about the ongoing translation. Hopefully, it would be published in 2020, or in early 2021.

I read both the novels, চিলেকোঠার সেপাই (The Soldier in the Attic) and খোয়াবনামা (The Saga of dreams), and two of his short story collections: দোযখের ওম (The Warmth of Hell) and অন্য ঘরে অন্য স্বর (A Different Voice in a Different Home). Here's a translation of the title story from the second book, a personal favorite.

The Opening Excerpt from Kwabnama
A Different Voice in a Different Home: A short story

A Personal and Critical Engagement with Akhtaruzzaman Elias: newspaper article
A Writer's Writer: newspaper article
 
K

kpjayan

Reader
"Daak Vaak" , is a mail only group which sends weekly 'Post Cards" on cultural and literary articles, had this Bangladeshi author in their last 'post card'.

The Language of Bengal and the Liberation War: Sufia Kamal’s Poems

Begum Sufia Kamal (1911 - 1999) was a Bangladeshi writer, poet and activist. Lovingly known as 'Khalamma' (aunt), Kamal holds a special place in Bangladesh’s literary and social history due to her provocative writing on feminism, nationalism, and communalism. While her early formal education was in Urdu, she was secretly taught to read and write Bengali by her mother. Though girls from her background weren’t allowed to go to school, young Sufia is said to have dressed up as a boy to attend classes.

In Kamal’s time, respectable Muslim women writing in Bengali was considered to be a shameful act as Urdu was being reinforced as a Muslim language and Bengali, a Hindu one. Subsequently, Pakistan imposed Urdu on all of Bangladesh, a political move that personally impacted Kamal and prompted her to get actively involved in The Language Movement of Bangladesh from 1952 onwards. This movement was an important forerunner to the Bengali nationalist movement that eventually led to its independence from Pakistan. In her poem “Our Language: The Language of Bengal,'' Kamal’s fervour for this cause is evident:
For our language many have died,
drawn from the arms of our mother
but down the road, smeared with their blood
I hope freedom will come to this land:
the simple language of a simple people
Will meet the demands of this our land.
Click to expand...

One more
Where My Darlings Lie Buried
(addressing martyrs)
No, I shall not disturb them
in their slumber
I shall leave for them, instead
a kiss on the green mounds.
As I touch the grass tenderly
I seem to feel the clasp
Of millions of eager hands,
And millions of eager voices
Speak to me:
Don’t you feel proud of us Mother?
That we have liberated our Bangladesh
Ah, my daredevil darlings that you have indeed done!
In the comity of nations
you have indeed laid out for your Mother Bangla
a bright carpet,
dyed with your ruby-red blood.
Now, and through the ages
Mahakal – the great God of time –
will stand at attention to pay you homage
for the marvel you have done.
Ah, our dear ones, you are deathless!
Click to expand...

Yasir, to you for your insights....
 
tiganeasca

tiganeasca

Moderator
Bagharu said:
Here's a translation of the title story from the second book, a personal favorite.

The Opening Excerpt from Kwabnama
A Different Voice in a Different Home: A short story
Click to expand...

For others who may be interested, on the same page as the Opening Excerpt (which I am minutes away from starting) is a link to something that appears to be useful. Yasir can give us a better sense of the value of the list, but I found a linked article to be of interest: Reading in the time of Corona: English translations of Bangladeshi fiction and poetry.
 
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tiganeasca

tiganeasca

Moderator
Also, moderator permitting, I am posting here a little note that I also posted on the "New & Notable" thread:

As a very big fan of his, I am particularly excited to note the appearance (Kindle only, it appears :mad:), of 3 Stories: Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay. Bandopadhyay died in 1950 and is likely most familiar to people here as the author of the books on which Satyajit Ray based his Apu trilogy (the first of which is Pather Panchali). Although he was a prolific author, very sadly not too much of his work has made it into English.
 
Bagharu

Bagharu

Reader
kpjayan said:
"Daak Vaak" , is a mail only group which sends weekly 'Post Cards" on cultural and literary articles, had this Bangladeshi author in their last 'post card'.

The Language of Bengal and the Liberation War: Sufia Kamal’s Poems
Click to expand...

Sufia Kamal is, mainly, a social reformer and organizer. Her political stances were pivotal in the history of creation of Bangladesh and its aftermath. Broadly, her literary output can be divided into three subject, 1) Writings on Liberation war and Bangladesh 2) musings of self surrounded by nature, 3) children rhymes with moral undercurrent. Her poems on history of Bangladesh are sublime and full of vigor, and have a special place in the national history and collective memory. Except her children rhymes, most of her other poems are not much read because of dated themes and style. Ekhattorer Diary (Diary from '71), a memoir based on her experience in 1971, is her monumental work, which gives a rare glimpse of life in Dhaka during the liberation war and how the people supported the war under the bayonet of Pakistani military.

In the end I must add, Sufia Kamal, in her long life, always stood firm against authoritarian power, her defiance of dictators are tales of legends. Aptly, she is called জননী সাহসিকা (Mother Courage).
 
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Bagharu

Bagharu

Reader
tiganeasca said:
For others who may be interested, on the same page as the Opening Excerpt (which I am minutes away from starting)
Click to expand...

tiganeasca, as you have read the excerpt, how was the translation? DId you like the excerpt?


tiganeasca said:
Yasir can give us a better sense of the value of the list, but I found a linked article to be of interest: Reading in the time of Corona: English translations of Bangladeshi fiction and poetry.
Click to expand...

Well, that list contains almost all the translated works available in English. While there are some others, most of which are so rare that one must be blessed by Gods themselves to find them. I have not read all of the books, so here, except the anthologies, I'll confine myself mostly to those I have read.

1. Contemporary Short stories from Bangladesh- UPL: If it is available, one should read it. Contains all the big names from Bangladesh.

2. Black Ice by Mahmudul Haque- HerperPerennial: I was talking about this book on the meet-up. Mahmudul Haque is the complete stylist, his works are short but the reading itself is a joy forever. কালো বরফ (Black Ice), is one of my most favorite of his works. I would higly recommend it.

3. The Triumph of the Snake Goddess by Kaiser Haq- Harvard University Press: A must read for the lovers of folklore and epics. মনসা দেবী, Manasa the snake goddess used to be the staple god of Bengal, her stories have been sung and told for hundreds of years and there are many versions of the same tale. There's a genre of medival poetry called মনসামঙ্গল কাব্য (Manashamangal Kavya). Everyone in greater Bengal and Assam knows about Manasa Devi, about the epic journey of Behula to get back her dead husband. I have not read the entire book, but a few pages just before the lockdown (books published abroad are stupendously priced here) and it is beautifully done.

4. Twelve Stories by Hasan Azizul Haq- Bengal Lights Books: Hasan Azizul Haq wrote only short stories for 50 years, only in 2006 he published his first novel. His stories are deeply Bengali, he uses dialects of Bangla extensively. Haq is one of the living giants of Bangladeshi literature, so I would recommend it to all of you. Jayan has read this collection, he might share with us his experience with the writing and the quality of the translation.

5. Two Novellas by Syed Shamsul Haq- Bengal Lights Books: Shamsul Haq is mainly a poet, and his poetry are simply marvelous. He is one of our major poets. Jayan has read this one also, and he had told me he could feel a poets hand behind the novellas. The main subject, like many of his prose writing, is Liberation war of 1971. My personal favorite is Forbidden Incense. Highly recommended.

Syed Haq translated another of his novels himself, Keep it Up, Kilroy. Though I don't think it is available abroad.

6. Letters of Blood by Rizia Rahman- Bengal Lights Books: Published in 1977, one of Rizia Rahmans most famous works. I have heard about this short novel for some time, and after seeing it in the list here, finished reading it last night. I can see why it is so widely talked about. In 1971, around 200,000 women were raped by the Pakistani military and their agents. And many of these women could never return to normal life because of social stigma and poor handling of the situation by the government. During the war the whole infrastructure broke down, with no money, no food, with a broken administrative condition, the post war Bangladesh was a complete mess, power struggle within the political parties, rampant corruption, famine and poverty as a backdrop, Rizia uses a Brothel to shade light on all these in this small writing. I think if you know a little bit of post war condition of Bangladesh, it helps to understand the work better.

7. I Remember Abbu by Humayun Azad- Amazon Crossing: I read it many years ago, a very short work, in original Bangla, it is simply melancholic, heartbreaking, and the prose is as beautiful as the bends of a river. Highly recommended. Now that I am writing about it, I suppose I should read it again :D

8. Selected Poems by Shaheed Quaderi- Bengal Lights Books: The only book of poetry in the list. Here's the wiki entry on the poet, it reads better than what I could write about his work. Shaheed Quaderis' poems are included in all the anthologies of modern Bengali poetry.


Imdadul Haq Milon, Moinul Ahsan Saber, Shaheen Akhtar are contemporary writers. Unfortunately I have not read any of their works that has been translated here and so I am refraining from commenting on them.
 
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tiganeasca

tiganeasca

Moderator
Yasir: Thank you!! I had only hoped you might recommend one or two of the listings (or warn us away from some of them). I certainly did not intend for you to provide a book-by-book commentary! Thank you, thank you. It is invaluable. And it will help me decide which direction(s) to take.

In my never-ending search for Bandyopadhyay, I decided to take a look at Amazon's India pages. Of course, there are some newer translations of his work available in English that are simply not sold in the USA. So, together with some of the books on this list, I suspect that I may have to place an order with Amazon India and see how many months it takes for the books to arrive. :) Still, the fact that I should be able to order from them opens a whole new world of books to me!

The excerpt. Ah, the excerpt. Honestly, I don't know quite what to make of it. It's stream of consciousness and yet it's not. The writing is interesting and the translation mostly fluid, although the translator makes use of some odd words or odd locutions. It's close to being completely fluent but not quite. In the end, the translation would not keep me from reading more, but I just can't quite decide what I think. I don't love it, but it's intriguing...a very different "voice."

(I see in the note following the excerpt that Sinha has apparently translated a lot of books by one of my favorites, Chattopadhyay. Since Sinha's name did not ring a bell, I went and looked at my small collection (I have eight) of Chattopadhyay's books and he is not a translator of any of them. My copy of Durgeshnandini is translated by someone else.)

Also: I looked at a few books from the above list on Amazon to see what I could find. I liked what I read of I Remember Abbu. Though no excerpts were available, I suspect I will also get some stories by Hasan Azizul Haq--there are several collections available, including the one listed. The Contemporary Short Stories collection is available here, too. Finally, a question. I discovered two other works that seem to be of interest but are not mentioned above: Up in the Main House & Other Stories by Nadeem Zaman and a collection entitled Lifelines: New Writing from Bangladesh, edited by Farah Ghusnavi; it is apparently a collection of women writers/self-described "feminist" writing published by Zubaan (in New Delhi, not Dhaka!). Any thoughts on these two?
 
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Bagharu

Bagharu

Reader
Nadeem Zaman is a Bangladeshi-american writer who writes in English, I have no idea about his writing or quality. But in my experience, non-resident Bangladeshi writers are at their best when writing about immigrants, but if the subject is about the home they left behind, most of the time they lack depth. I would highly recommend a critically acclaimed book by another NRB, In the Light of What We Know by Zia Haider Rahman.

Lifelines: New Writing from Bangladesh- unfortunately I can't help you with it also. Surprisingly, I have not seen this one in Bangladesh yet, though I frequent the best bookshops in Dhaka and Sylhet. Must be my own lack of attention :cry:

When it comes to publishing Bangladeshi books in translation, the translators are always searching for an international publisher, most of the time an Indian one, so that the book gets a larger reader pool. Bengal Lights Books is a fairly new publisher, associated with the English department of University of Liberal Arts- Bangladesh.

While the subject of the novella is great, I found the writing average in Letters of Blood, so if you are going to order it, don't expect the writing to amaze you, but the subject, and life inside a Bangladeshi brothel, that's a completely different story :D

And also, I hope the translation of Khwabnama comes out as soon as possible, everyone I talked with says the same thing about the opening, they didn't know what to make of it, but as they finish the book, they always say, what a wonderful trip!
 
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tiganeasca

tiganeasca

Moderator
Bagharu said:
And also, I hope the translation of Khwabnama comes out as soon as possible, everyone I talked with says the same thing about the opening, they didn't know what to make of it, but as they finish the book, they always say, what a wonderful trip!
Click to expand...

Thank you for this. I'm glad to know that I am not alone in my reaction to the opening. As I said, it was a little off-putting but not so much so that I wouldn't keep reading. And a wonderful trip is always the best reward. I can't count the number of books I have read where the first chapter or so made me wonder whether it was worth the investment of time, only to finish it and be grateful that I stuck with it!
 
SpaceCadet

SpaceCadet

Quiet Reader
'Lifelines, New Writing from Bangladesh', is a book of (15) short stories all originally written in English by bangladeshi women most of which were expat at the time I read the book (few years back). Their names are: Shabnam Nadiya, Sabrina Fatma Ahmad, Srabonti Narmeen Ali, Sharbari Ahmed, Farah Ghuznavi, Abeer Hoque, Tisa Muhaddes, S. Bari, Munize Manzur, Lori. S. Khan, Shazia Omar, Iffat Nawaz, Rubaiyat Khan, Sadaf Saaz Siddiqi, Alizeh Ahmed.
 
Leseratte

Leseratte

Well-known member
kpjayan said:
This has not restricted to Bangladesh, but the Bengali ( Bangla) language in particular, from both sides of the border.

www.thedailystar.net

200 years of selected Bangalee literature up for grab

Bishwa Sahitya Kendra completes the mammoth task of compiling and publishing the 74,000-page compilation
www.thedailystar.net www.thedailystar.net
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This is absolutely monumental!I'm very happy about the modest four volumes about women issues, whatever might be meant by it.
 
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