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“What I read in 2020”: Writers Select
We asked some of the prominent writers and academics from Bangladesh about the books they most enjoyed in 2020. Some of them confessed that the year has been too difficult to find much time for reading. Others named a diverse line up of books, from fiction set in Bangladesh, Nigeria and Florida, to nonfiction exploring current affairs, poetry, history and memoir.
﻿FAKRUL ALAM
Writer, academic, translatorAuthor of Once More into the Past (Daily Star Books, 2020)
One book which bowled me over and which I realise I should have read a long time back is Akhteruzzaman Elias’s masterpiece, Khowabnama (Mawla Brothers, 1996). I believe it’s being translated now; if it finds a good international publisher Elias will surely be on the shelves with Hardy and Faulkner as a literary chronicler who made a whole region come alive at a certain moment of history.
As the year ends, I am being astounded by Shashi Tharoor’s immensely relevant and learned but completely absorbing book, The Battle of Belonging (Aleph Book Company, 2020), and I can’t resist telling you how the Nobel Prize awards alerted me to Louis Gluck’s quiet but subtle poems of emotions evoked oh so delicately!
KAISER HAQ
Translator, critic, academic
Of books published this year, I have read with particular pleasure two books that happen to be very different in subject matter. A Little History of Poetry by John Carey (Yale University Press, 2020) engagingly blends biographical and historical information with insightful textual commentary, and in just 80,000 words covers almost everything poetic from Gilgamesh to Maya Angelou and Les Murray. Has China Won (PublicAffairs, 2020) by Kishore Mahbubani is a timely and brilliant analysis of issues arising out of China’s meteoric rise as an economic superpower. It includes wise advice that the West had better heed.
SELINA HOSSAIN
Writer, academic, translator
It is hard to find books on Indian Aryan tribes and learn about their traditions and experiences. I found both in the writings of Indigenous author Verrien Elwin, edited by Mahashweta Debi in an edition published by the Shahittya Academy in 2001.
REBECCA HAQUE
Professor of Literature, University of Dhaka
In 2020, I re-read The Romantic Agony by Mario Praz (Oxford University Press, 1978, tr. A. Davidson), Meena Alexander’s Name me a Word (Yale University Press, 2018), Shahidha Bari’s Dressed (Jonathan Cape, 2019), Moira Egan’s Synaesthesium (Encounter Books, 2017), Toni Morrison’s The Measure of Our Lives (Knopf, 2019), Chuck Palahniuk’s Consider This (Grand Central Publishing, 2020), Ntozake Shange’s For Coloured Girls who have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow is Enuf (Scribner, 1997), and Lakhsmi Vishwanathan’s Women of Pride (Roli Books, 2008).
SHAHEEN AKHTAR
Author, development worker
Although originally a poem about love, verses on the Prophet Solomon have been performed in synagogues for the past 3,000 years, yet never have they lost their depth and essence, even when translated into Bangla. This year, I was completely enchanted by the Soleiman Geetika in poet Sajjad Sharif’s translation.
TAHMIMA ANAM
Writer & anthropologist
Author of The Bengal Trilogy (Daily Star Books)
The book that bowled me over this year is Leesa Gazi’s Hellfire (Westland Publishers, 2020, tr. Shabnam Nadiya). It was published in Bangla 10 years ago as Rourob , but I read it for the first time in English. It’s a surprising, dark, thought-provoking novel which has haunted my dreams since I read it. The translation captures the humour and tone of Leesa Gazi’s writing perfectly. I cannot recommend it enough.
SHABNAM NADIYA
Writer and translator
Among a handful of books that blew me away this year, Barnali Saha’s The North End (Pathak Samabesh, 2020) has a simple story—the narrator is in Dhaka asking a friend to help her leave her husband and fly off to her Danish boyfriend. Saha uses this springboard to explore why the pricey coffee joint The North End has eight branches, all in Dhaka, and one in Ukhiya, the remote border town hosting the biggest Rohingya camp, globalization, international aid, and the refugee crisis. This novel is rooted in desh while it casts a keen eye on the bigger world out there and does so utilising a female voice that is contemporary, urban and self-aware.
FARAH GHUZNAVI
Author of Fragments of Riversong (Daily Star Books, 2013), Editor of Lifelines
Written by Florida-based novelist Carl Hiaasen, Squeeze Me (Knopf, 2020) manages to satirise what many of us would consider beyond satire—namely, an American president who spends much of his time in his Florida resort, surrounded by his fawning, racist fan club. Hiaasen then draws in a cast of misfits to tell a blackly humorous tale where the only illegal alien worth worrying about is a Burmese python. It is the snake that is responsible for the disappearance of one of the president’s rich acolytes, whose “murder” is inevitably blamed on an illegal migrant.
I also enjoyed reading Oyinkan Braithwaite’s My Sister, the Serial Killer (Doubleday, 2018). This book tells the story of a dysfunctional pair of Nigerian siblings. As the elder of the two, Korede has been brought up to protect Ayoola. But when this extends to cleaning up after Ayoola’s murderous tendencies, the reader is left wondering what really drives Korede to keep rescuing her sister. For me, the story was a brilliant escape from the challenges of pandemic reality, and a welcome introduction to a writer capable of pulling off such an interesting and unusual writing style.
COLLAGE: Ehsanur Raza Ronny
Compiled by Shah Tazrian Ashrafi and Towrin Zaman