Galpa

About the Book

This vibrant and thought-provoking anthology of translated short stories is representative of the variety of issues that women from Bangladesh tackle in their writings. It includes stories about the 1971 War of Liberation, women’s ‘honour’, mother-daughter relationships, the vagaries of marriage and contemporary political corruption.

Well-established women writers such as Selina Hossain and Nasreen Jahan are represented here, along with emerging writers, the better to evoke the broad range of Bangladeshi women’s literary voices. Daring in both form and theme, these stories reveal the exciting transformation that fiction writing is currently experiencing on the contemporary literary scene.

About the Contributors

Firdous Azim is Professor of English at BRAC University in Dhaka, Bangladesh. She is co-editor of Galpa: Short Stories by Bangladeshi Women and has published widely on literary, cultural and women’s issues, both inside and outside the country, including The Colonial Rise of the Novel (1993). She is an active member of Naripokkho, a woman’s activist group in Bangladesh, and is currently working on a women activists’ memoir project.

Niaz Zaman is Professor of English, University of Dhaka. She is the editor of Galpa: Short Stories by Bangladeshi Women. Her other publications include the prize-winning study A Divided Legacy: The Partition in Selected Novels of India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh; the novel The Crooked Neem Tree and the short story anthology The Dance and Other Stories.

Reviews

‘Once again, Saqi Books have brought to the public a collection of passionate and poignant prose from across the shores and into the literary scene.’
Calabash

'Selecting the more tried and tested authors ensures quality control and evenness of standard - aspects that are highly welcome.'
London Magazine