This pioneering book brings together several critical essays on Bangladeshi writers in the English language, both at home and abroad, and interviews with a prominent poet and a novelist.
The past years have seen various attempts to conceptualize and debate the tradition of Bangladeshi literature in English. English has been in Bengal, which included the geographical territory that constitutes present-day Bangladesh, since the arrival of Ralph Fitch in 1583, and although Bengalis started experimenting creatively in the language in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the tradition suffered significant setbacks in Bangladesh and remained in semi-muzzled state for various political and cultural reasons discussed in the book, before and after independence. However, the tradition has seen a surge since the 1990s, and several writers have emerged on home soil and in places where Bangladeshis have settled, including Australia, Canada, Sweden, the UK, and the USA. The book provides an overview of this tradition and investigates the various thematic and stylistic issues in the works of the selected writers, suggesting the vibrancy and versatility of this evolving national and postcolonial literary stream.
The book will be of interest to researchers, academics, and scholars in the field of Bangladeshi writing in English, Southeast Asian literature, Asian literature, diaspora, and literary studies. The chapters in this book were originally published in the Journal of Postcolonial Writing.