Items15The creator’s order
  1. 1Djinn City (2017)Djinn City (2017) 2.0/10 on Open LibraryPublished Jan 1, 2017In 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…0
  2. 2HellfireHellfireOn 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…0
  3. 3A Golden Age (2007)A Golden Age (2007) 8.0/10 on Open LibraryPublished Jan 1, 2007Rehana 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…0
  4. 4Sultana's Dream and Padmarag (2005)Sultana's Dream and Padmarag (2005) 8.0/10 on Open LibraryPublished Jan 1, 2005Read 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…0
  5. 5Book of Dhaka (2016)Book of Dhaka (2016)Published Jan 1, 2016Spend 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.0
  6. 6Khwabnama (2021)Khwabnama (2021)Published Jan 1, 2021Sharecroppers 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…0
  7. 7Rickshaw Girl (2007)Rickshaw Girl (2007)Published Jan 1, 2007Naima’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…0
  8. 8The Black Coat (2013)The Black Coat (2013)Published Jan 1, 2013In 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…0
  9. 9The Henna Wars (2020)The Henna Wars (2020) 6.0/10 on Open LibraryPublished Jan 1, 2020Nishat 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…0
  10. 10Life and Political Reality (2022)Life and Political Reality (2022)Published Jan 1, 2022Start 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…0