The twenty stories in this anthology have been written over a period of almost fifty years and include stories about the partition of 1947 and the liberation war of 1971. Some of the best-known writers of Bangladesh are included in this volume: Shaukat Osman, Hasan Azizul Huq, Selina Hossain, Rizia Rahman. Many of the writers have won national and international awards for their work. Together, the stories provide an introduction to the genre as well as a glimpse into the social, political, and cultural life of Bangladesh.
Published on the occasion of the third anniversary of the paper, New Age Short Stories testifies to the role that the paper has played from the beginning in making Bangladeshi fiction, in English and in English translation, readily available to an English-reading audience. In the course of these three years, New Age has published so many stories that all of them could not be accommodated in one volume. Only stories that appeared from September 2003 to September 2005 have been included. When New Age started publication on June 7, 2003, it did not have a regular story feature.
The cretion of the two nation states of Pakistan and India in 1947 was accopmpanied by the partition of the Punjab in the west and Bengal in the east. While there is much literature available about the efftecs of partition in the west, there is little about the impact of the partition on East Pakistan/Bangladesh. The Escape and Other Stories of 1947 brings together a range of stories that focus on the consequences of the partition on the people of East Pakistan/Bangladesh.
In this second collection of short stories, Niaz Zaman brings the versatility of her pen and imagination to look at the world around her and tell the stories of men and women caught up in the business of living. While she often narrates her stories from the perspective of her women characters, she is also able to enter the minds of her male protagonist. What does it feel like when a man bids farewell to a child after divorce? How does a raw provincial react when he is in a cosmopolitan city for the first time?
This volume of essays is a critical survey of the literary scene in the late 1980's. It takes account of the profound changes in Bangladesh society and the world during the previous three decades, especially, the crucial experience of the Liberation War through which the people of this region attained statehood. Experiences and upheavals of this kind do affect the form and content of literature and influence creativity and the response to it.
The stories in this collection have been written over a period of twenty-five years and include both published and new writings. The earliest of the stories ‘A Study in Black and White’ and ‘The Interview’, data from the 70’s; The Dance’ was a prizewinner in the first Asiaweek Short Story Competition in 1981. Zaman’s characters range from ordinary housewives to domestic servants, from unwanted daughters to eccentric artists.
As a literary genre, the essays generally cover a wide spectrum of issues, topics and themes, ranging from something mundane and topical to relatively serious and philosophical. Indeed, they sometimes synthesize both aspects in the same piece, e.g. in the author's essays on evening walk (Twilight Ritual) and Good Conversation.
The essays in this anthology, a representative selection of papers presented at a seminar on Commonwealth literature, explore the many issues raised by the phrase Commonwealth Writing. Among the topics discussed am the nature and validity of the rubric Commonwealth Writing, the emotional or political justification for using a foreign language for creative purposes, the problems faced by Third World writers in reaching readers. The essays cover a wide geographic expanse, from Australia through India and Africa to Canada and the West Inches.
This issue constitutes Volume 2 of Six Seasons Review (Numbers 1&2), the only English-language periodical published from Bangladesh devoted exclusively to arts and letters. The response to our first two numbers have been heartening, for many people have told us that they liked the format and the content. But we would like to receive more fiction, poetry, non-fiction prose essays, literary essays/book reviews from our readers (as well as praise). In particular, we look forward to receiving submissions for our fourth issue, which is a special number on Dhaka.
Six Seasons is a Bangladeshi-Indian Subcontinental, international periodical devoted exclusively to arts and letters. Earlier Bangladeshi ventures like New Values in the 1950s, and Form: A Magazine of the Arts in the 1980s, generated much interest, but folded mainly because the tasks of gathering material, editing and publishing at the same time proved difficult to sustain for the individuals who launched them. Our present effort will be to pick up the pieces where other left off.