A touching story of war, family, innocence, and memory from one of the top Bengali writers of all time. For the first time translated into English.
Bangladesh, 1971: the war of independence from Pakistan has torn through peaceful villages and turned life upside down. In the midst of war, one young girl holds on as she discovers the world’s unpredictability. During her father’s prolonged absence, she reminisces about the essence of her abbu, an esteemed professor, loving community leader, and now unexpected warrior.
She is moved by his quiet determination to preserve Bengali language and culture in a struggle for autonomy. In his diaries, her abbu describes the painful decisions he must make because of the threat of war, from embracing the brutality of taking up arms to the struggle of moving his family from the embattled city of Dhaka.
Amid the tragedy is the unbroken bond between a father and daughter, which makes this powerful and historically faithful portrait of a family surviving the worst in the fight for independence all the more stirring.
Humayun Azad (1947–2004) is regarded as one of the most influential writers in modern Bengali literature in Bangladesh. An esteemed poet, academic scholar, critic, and linguist with more than seventy titles to his credit, Azad produced an oeuvre that is both rich and multidimensional. He was awarded the Bangla Academy Award in 1986 for his contributions to Bengali linguistics. In 2012, the government of Bangladesh honored him posthumously with the Ekushey Padak Award. Throughout his career, he was praised for his outspoken critique of fundamentalism and his unflinching support of the Bengali language and the culture it represents.
Born in Rarikhal, Dhaka, in 1947, Azad had his early education at Sir J. C. Bose Institution, Rarikhal, and higher studies at Dhaka College and the University of Dhaka. He earned his BA and MA in Bengali, standing first in the class in 1967 and 1968, and obtained his PhD in 1976 from the University of Edinburgh. He taught at the University of Chittagong and Jahangirnagar University and was a professor of Bengali at the University of Dhaka. On August 12, 2004, Azad died in Munich, Germany. He was laid to rest in Rarikhal, his rural homeland.
Arunava Sinha translates classic, modern, and contemporary Bengali fiction and nonfiction from Bangladesh and India into English. More than forty of his translations have been published in India, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Twice he has earned India’s top translation prize, the Crossword Book Award for translated books. He was born and raised in Kolkata and lives and writes in New Delhi, India.
