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Items15
1
Djinn City (2017)
2.0/10on Open Library
Published
In a crumbling mansion in Dhaka, Indelbed knows so little about his mother that he accepts the family’s explanation of her death. Then his father falls into a coma and his cousins have to reckon with a world of djinn. Start here if you want a family secret that opens onto a sprawling, darkly funny fantasy.
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Hellfire
On her fortieth birthday, Lovely makes her first solo trip to Dhaka’s Gausia Market. How long she can stay out matters as much as where she goes. Read Shabnam Nadiya’s translation from Bangla for the close, unsettling atmosphere of a household whose rules start to come apart during an ordinary errand.
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A Golden Age (2007)
8.0/10on Open Library
Published
Rehana starts out worrying about keeping her two children safe in East Pakistan in 1971. Their commitments during the war force her to decide how much of the family’s life she can put at risk. Start here for a novel about independence told from the point of view of someone trying to keep a home together.
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Sultana's Dream and Padmarag (2005)
8.0/10on Open Library
Published
Read these two experiments together. The short Sultana’s Dream imagines women running a country powered by science. In Padmarag, a women-run school and welfare center brings its ideas down to the scale of a working institution. Sultana’s Dream was written in English. The edition pairs it with Barnita Bagchi’s translation of the Bangla novella.
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Book of Dhaka (2016)
Published
Spend a few pages at a time in a different Dhaka. Arunava Sinha and Pushpita Alam’s anthology puts ten writers side by side, so a city that one character knows well can be strange territory to another. This is the place to sample short fiction in translation before committing to a single writer.
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Khwabnama (2021)
Published
Sharecroppers in rural Bengal want to keep more of the crop they grow on land owned by others. When their struggle enters the novel, it shares space with dreams, legends, and things remembered by earlier generations. Choose Arunava Sinha’s translation from Bangla if you want the density of a village’s storied past along with its arguments about land.
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Rickshaw Girl (2007)
Published
Naima’s skill is painting traditional alpana patterns, but her family needs money and she wants to contribute. This illustrated chapter book gives younger readers a girl whose help can cause real trouble before she figures out how to use the skills she already has. The glossary gives curious readers a way into the Bangla words.
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The Black Coat (2013)
Published
In the capital of a newly independent Bangladesh, an unemployed journalist finds that a young man he has taken under his wing can do a convincing imitation of Sheikh Mujib. The satire gets darker as people start to pay attention. It’s for readers who want to see what happens when political authority depends on a voice and a familiar coat.
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The Henna Wars (2020)
6.0/10on Open Library
Published
Nishat and Flávia start competing henna businesses for a school project in Ireland. The rivalry makes the generous impulses and awkward choices in this teen romance unusually interesting. Pick it for a story about a Bangladeshi Irish girl wrestling with who gets to profit from a tradition she knows through family.
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Life and Political Reality (2022)
Published
Start with Abu Ibrahim’s Death, the second novella in this edition translated from Bangla by V. Ramaswamy and Shahroza Nahrin. Its focus on one man’s work, family, and ambitions makes a revealing companion to the first novella, which follows the return of a man tied to wartime violence in an Old Dhaka neighborhood.
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Tree without roots (1967)
Published
Majid arrives in a village and cloaks a neglected grave in red cloth. The shrine becomes his claim to authority and the village becomes a place where small doubts have consequences. Read Waliullah’s own English translation of Lal Shalu for the sharpness with which it observes how a stranger wins his neighbors’ trust.
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Lajja (2014)
Published
A Hindu family living in Bangladesh faces mounting danger after the destruction of a mosque across the border in India. The family’s differences over whether to leave are what give the book its force. Try Anchita Ghatak’s English translation if you’re looking for a direct, angry novel about the cost of deciding where home can still be.
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Killing the water stories (2010)
Published
These stories travel from a village in Bengal in the 1930s to Bangladesh’s independence struggle and on to American cities. One Bangladeshi veteran in Detroit finds his interest in a blues singer competing with memories he cannot put aside. A good follow-on if you want to see how the experience of leaving a country keeps changing afterward.
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In blissful hell (1993)
Published
Listen to the way siblings talk when neighbors might overhear. In the opening, Khoka fusses over what his older sister Rabeya says while she tries to make a doll by wrapping a pillow in a sheet. That mixture of tenderness, embarrassment, and watchfulness is a good reason to pick Mohammad Nurul Huda’s short English translation.
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Beloved Rongomala
Based on an eighteenth-century legend from Noakhali, this novel follows Rongomala’s rise and fall at the court of a powerful landowner. Alongside her story are the young queen Phuleshwari, her collection of birds, and Heera, the maid who raised her. Shabnam Nadiya’s translation from Bangla is a good choice if you want a historical novel that takes the stories people pass down seriously.
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