Literature and Fiction

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?

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.

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.

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.