Bangladesh at 50: This anthology offers a selection of stories written in both English and Bengali

The history of Bangladeshi prose literature dates back to the pre-partition era before 1947 when a handful of Muslim writers from Bengal emerged and wrote alongside the predominantly Hindu Kolkata literary circle. Their ideas, perspectives, and diction were at least partly informed by being steeped in Islamic philosophy and the lives of Bengali Muslims.

At the time, they remained on the periphery of the mainstream, Kolkata-centric Bengali literary tradition, but today they are recognised as the precursors of Bangladeshi literature. Prominent among them were Abul Mansur Ahmad, Abu Rushd, and Syed Waliullah, who wrote in a variety of prose genres, including short stories that portrayed the complexity of the contemporary sociocultural milieu of Muslim Bengal. Bangladesh did not yet exist as a political or geographical entity, but their stories focused on rural and urban life in East Bengal, which would become Bangladesh in 1971.

In the fifty years since independence, Bangladeshi literature, including its short fiction, has evolved and matured through experimentations in form, language, style, and theme.

Women’s voices began to emerge more forcefully, with authors like Rizia Rahman, Selina Hossain, and Shaheen Akhtar depicting female realities and interrogating gender and culture in Bangladeshi society. There is also an increasing cohort writing fiction in English, along with a growing literary diaspora – novelists like Monica Ali, Adib Khan, Tahmima Anam, Zia Haider Rahman, Rumaan Alam and others have been published internationally to great critical acclaim.

In a 2012 interview published in World Literature Today, Kazi Anis Ahmed and Mahmud Rahman observed that while the nationalist fervour of the 1960s and ’70s led to a high point in Bangladeshi writing, that trend unfortunately did not flourish. Indeed, the literary giants nurtured by the pre-independence zeitgeist, such as Syed Shamsul Haq, Hasan Azizul Huq, and Akhteruzzaman Elias, have remained unmatched and Bangladesh has lagged behind India and Pakistan on the literary world stage.

Only a handful of Bangladeshi authors have achieved international renown, even though there is no dearth of writers in the country.

What is the reason for this disconnect? Critics vary in their assessment, but many would agree on the need for high quality collections, anthologies, and translations into English. In addition, the two parallel streams of Bengali and English writing need to be bridged, as well as the distinctions between Bangladesh-based and diasporic writers.

Our Many Longings: Contemporary Short Fiction from Bangladesh is an attempt to take stock and bridge some of those divides, bringing together short stories written in English and those translated from Bengali, from both local and diasporic authors. Marking the 50th year of independence, the anthology focuses on Bangladeshi literature from the 1970s to the present.

Collected in this volume are twelve short stories in English, of which half are by diasporic writers, and seven stories translated from Bengali. From the tea gardens of Sylhet and the cyclone-stricken port city of Chittagong to a restaurant kitchen in Dubai and the gritty streets of New York, the stories range across the country and spill beyond its borders to other countries and continents, wherever Bangladeshis have found themselves.

They register the trauma of the liberation war and the ongoing search for agency and self-definition. Common themes emerge: haunting preoccupations with nation, identity, desire, loss, limits, borders, and an abiding sense of nostalgia. On a deeper level, these are stories about the perennial human condition of yearning and striving – stories of our many longings.

Several of these stories are set in Dhaka, the 400-year-old capital of Bangladesh.

Whether polluted, congested, or heartless, the city’s complex cultural history and psychic ambiguities are exemplified by the titular character of Kazi Anis Ahmed’s “Ramkamal’s Gift.” The naked, wandering mendicant (Nanga Pagla) in Kaiser Haq’s “The Emperor’s New Clothes” could be classed together with Ramkamal as a quintessential roaming figure, not uncommon in the streets of Dhaka, both mystical and mundane.

In Khademul Islam’s iconic “Cyclone,” it is the port city of Chittagong, now known as Chattogram, that figures prominently, right after the devastation of the 1963 cyclone. But more than the destruction wrought, the story captures a pivotal historical moment of neglect and nonchalance by the Pakistan government, which would help set into motion the “simmering, churning, seething, roiling [that] would blast East Pakistan loose from its moorings and set it free as Bangladesh.”

The Liberation War of 1971 left deep wounds in the national psyche that have never fully healed and keep returning in literature and art. In Afsan Chowdhury’s “Torso,” a dismembered corpse becomes a signifier of religious and national allegiance. In Hasan Azizul Huq’s “Without a Name, Without a Tribe,” the protagonist loses his grip on reality after witnessing the barbarities of the Pakistani army, and starts exhuming his dead relatives.

In “Green Passport,” Shaheen Akhtar explores the controversial situation of the stranded Biharis, an Indian-origin, Urdu-speaking community who sided with West Pakistan during the war and have remained stateless in Bangladesh. The story examines the shifting ambiguities and uncertainties of national identity, loyalty, and martyrdom.

Other stories in the anthology examine the complexities of human psychology, relationships, desire, and disillusionment. In Syed Manzoorul Islam’s “Alter Ego,” a strange bond develops between a convicted felon and the public prosecutor who sent him to jail, while in Nasreen Jahan’s “The Bird Keeper,” an exotic bird becomes the emblem of a cherished past.

Relationships disappoint in Farah Ghuznavi’s “First Love, Second Chance,” where a young woman is forced to mature through disillusionment, and an extramarital romance offers an escape from meaninglessness in Nadeem Zaman’s “Next Door.” Human relationships take an absurd, dystopian turn in Mojaffor Hossain’s “After Breaking News” when a living man is presumed dead and his family and friends suddenly cannot recognise him.

Many of the characters in these stories contemplate their roots and the idea of home, sometimes homes that were cherished and lost in a nation that has transcended geographical borders. In “Nuru” by Hasan Al Zayed, a young scholar from Bangladesh experiences a crisis of identity while walking through a posh neighbourhood in Washington, DC, and suddenly remembers the homeless rustic who was taken in by his family back home.

In “Frank and Frida,” Fayeza Hasanat explores diasporic identity and distress through the figure of Farida who becomes Frida in New York. In Manzu Islam’s “Catching Pheasants,” two Bangladeshi restaurant workers in a small English town come to recognize their otherness when they are almost caught stealing pheasants, while Dilruba Z. Ara’s “Light” illuminates the suffering of a migrant worker in Dubai who becomes nameless and almost nonhuman.

A character’s loss of identity is especially poignant in Rizia Rahman’s “Petrea,” which portrays the after-effects of colonial trauma when a young housemaid sired by an Englishman tea planter comes to the painful realization that she has no claim on her English heritage.

For women in Bangladesh, selfhood and agency are often at odds with a patriarchal system of values that can even manifest as violence.

In Razia Sultana Khan’s “Decoy” and Rahad Abir’s “Beauty and the Jinn,” young girls fall prey to predatory older men, yet society protects the predator and condemns the victim. Even an educated, upper-middle-class woman is not psychologically safe, as we find in Tahmima Anam’s “Mother’s Milk,” where a young mother is judged for the accidental death of an infant.

The stories collected in Our Many Longings are only a small sampling of the breadth and diversity of the literature of Bangladesh, which continues to evolve and expand in new directions. By bringing together stories in English and those translated from Bengali, by writers at home and abroad, I hope this anthology provides a window into the excellence of contemporary short fiction from Bangladesh as we mark the golden jubilee of our independence.

Excerpted with permission from Our Many Longings: Contemporary Short Fiction from Bangladesh, edited by Sohana Manzoor, Dhauli Books.