Kazi Imdadul Huq's novel Abdullah, written nearly a century ago, is regarded as one of the first modern novels by a Bengali Muslim writer. Initially known for his poetry and children's literature, Huq ...

Whenever readers think of Akhteruzzaman Elias (1943-1997), his novels and short stories immediately come to mind. He wrote only two novels—Khoabnama (1996), centred on the Tebhaga Movement, and ...

What relevance could an early-20th-century Bengali novel have today? As soon as I asked the question, I knew it was rather silly. Universalism is what makes good literature. Which is why decades and ...

In the first pages of his 2018 Bengali novel, now available in English, Manoranjan Byapari puts a finger on the scale of its literary ambitions. He writes: “This story is about the people who live on ...

Recently, when I needed to read Pather Panchali—one of the great Bengali novels, now approaching its centenary—I discovered that my Gen Z cousin owned a copy. Given the current state of Bengali ...

Ever since he can remember, the prolific Bengali director Srijit Mukherjee has been a fan of Uttam Kumar. “Which Bengali isn’t?” he wonders. “It’s one of my greatest regrets that I was not working at ...