By Shahaduz Zaman
Genre: Fiction
Imprint: Moving Words
Here is a conversation with translator Noora Shamsi Bahar.
Read the review of The Mynah Bird’s Testimony done by The Daily Star .
Translated from the Bengali by V. Ramaswamy and Noora Shamsi Bahar
“He had realised that man walked endlessly on a tightrope – at one end of which lay truth, with falsehood on the other. He had realised that constructing the truth according to the situation was what clever folk did.”
Deftly translated, the twelve stories of this Anthology explore Shahaduz Zaman’s keen insight into the myriad aspects of Bengali consciousness, of walking the tightrope of life, the possibility of morality, humanity, goodness in face of the chafing forces of modernity, war, greed corruption.
Which end of that tightrope do most of us reach?
Book Details
Language: English
Paperback: 208 pages
ISBN-13: 978-8196690076
Formats: Paperback
Price: ₹375
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About Shahaduz
Shahaduz Zaman has published over 30 books in Bengali in different genres such as short stories, novels, travelogues, and essays. He won the Bangla Academy Literary Award in 2016 in the fiction category, the highest national award for literature in Bangladesh.
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His historical docufiction ‘Kracher Colonel’ is a national best seller. A number of his books have been adapted into films and stage dramas. A film ‘Komola Rocket’ scripted by him has received several national and international awards and is available on Netflix. His biopic novel based on the famous Bengali poet Jibonanondo Das, titled ‘Ekjon Komolalebu’ has been adapted for a theatre production and staged in London.
Read some of his translated works.
About Ramaswamy
V. Ramaswamy (1960) is a non-fiction writer and translator based in Kolkata, India. As an activist working for the rights of the labouring poor, Ramaswamy has written about workers, squatters, slums, poverty, housing and resettlement, and has been at the forefront of efforts to envision and initiate the rebuilding of his city from the grassroots.
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He has translated the Bengali writers Subimal Misra, Manoranjan Byapari, Adhir Biswas, Shahidul Zahir, Mashiul Alam, Shahaduz Zaman, Swati Guha, Ansaruddin, and Ismail Darbesh, among others.
Ramaswamy received the Toji fellowship in 2015, and the inaugural Literature Across Frontiers – Charles Wallace India Trust fellowship in creative writing and translation at Aberystwyth University, Wales, in 2016. He received the inaugural translation fellowship of the New India Foundation, and the inaugural PEN Presents award in 2022. His translation of Life and Political Reality: Two Novellas, by Shahidul Zahir, was awarded the prize for best translated book for 2022 by the Bangla Translation Foundation (Dhaka). The Nemesis, by Manoranjan Byapari, was shortlisted for the JCB Prize for literature in 2023. Ramaswamy’s final translation of Subimal Misra’s late anti-stories, The Earth Quakes, was published in 2024.
Read some of his translation works.
About Noora
Noora Shamsi Bahar is a Senior Lecturer at the Department of English and Modern Languages, North South University. She completed her MA in English from The University of Western Ontario and has been teaching undergraduate students since 2010.
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She has presented research papers on the themes of violence (on the page, stage, and screen), performative revenge, rape trauma, childhood defiance, and transgressive womanhood in Oxford, Prague, and Dhaka. Despite being born to Iranian parents, she finds pleasure in reading short fiction in Bengali – her third language, and translating them into English. Her translations have been published in anthologies, magazines, and dailies.