Library Of Bangladesh Presents: Syed Shamsul Haq

The inaugural batch of Dhaka Translation Center's 'Library of Bangladesh' series consists of a collection of short stories by Hasan Azizul Huq, translated by Bhaskar Chattopadhyay and two novellas by Syed Shamsul Haq, translated by Saugata Ghosh. The Library of Bangladesh series has been conceived and created by Dhaka Translation Center (DTC) at the University of Liberal Arts Bangladesh (ULAB) to make works by leading Bangladeshi writers accessible to world audiences in high-quality translations. The series is being edited by award-winning translator Arunava Sinha and published by Bengal Lights Books.

Bangladesh 1971. Burnt and destroyed. Like a crematorium. Piles of corpses. Torture cells. Barbarian Pak army versus helpless Bengali common people. Syed Shamsul Haq’s two novellas are breathing, glaring bystanders of the war.

In ‘Blue Venom,’ a middle-aged employee of a private firm is arrested on the morning of 27th March and taken to a torture cell. There, he is tortured slowly to death – only for being a namesake of the rebel poet Kazi Nazrul Islam. Not only the viciousness of the captors but also their ignorance lies exposed.

In ‘Forbidden Incense,’ a woman returns to her paternal village after her journalist husband has been made to disappear on the night of the 25th of March. Here she meets a boy with a Muslim name – his entire family has been killed by the Pakistani army. The village has turned into a slaughterhouse. They are caught while gathering the corpses scattered everywhere to give them a decent burial. National and personal histories mingle.

Syed Shamsul Haq's flowing depiction of 1971 through the living language of these two novellas make readers who haven’t witnessed the war relive the terror and disgust of the sufferers.