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Why There Are No Noyontara Flowers In Agargaon Colony : Stories

By Shahidul Zahir| V. Ramaswamy

 399.00 inclusive of all taxes

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About the book

Born in 1953 in Old Dhaka, Shahidul Zahir published only six works in his short life – but these are some of the most unique and powerful works of fiction to have come out of the subcontinent. With his own particular blend of surrealism, folklore, oral storytelling traditions, magic realism, a searing understanding of social and political reality, and rare clarity of vision, he created a truly extraordinary oeuvre.

A moholla caught in a time warp…

A down-on-their-luck husband and wife who are stalked by ravens…

A magician who sells addictive figs…

A pair of thieving monkeys…

In these pages is the world of the moholla, where rumours and gossip abound and where everyone knows everyone, where seemingly bizarre yet intriguing creations deliver profound commentary on post-independence Bangladesh. Superbly translated by V. Ramaswamy, each of these ten stories takes you beyond the rules of language and storytelling, into a place that is at once achingly familiar and terrifying.

Pages: 280

Available in: Paperback

Language: English

Shahidul Zahir

Shahidul Zahir(1953–2008) completed his post-graduation at the University of Dhaka andthe American University, Washington, D.C., and joined the civil servicesin Bangladesh. He is best known for his novella, Jibon O Rajnoitik Bastobota (1987). Shahidul Zahir’s oeuvre includes the short story collections Parapar (1985), Dumurkheko Manush O Onyanno Golpo (2000), and Dolu Nodir Haowa O Onyanno Golpo (2004), the novels Shey Raate Purnima Chhilo (1995) and Mukher Dike Dekhi (2006), and the novella Abu Ibrahimer Mrityu (2009).

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V. Ramaswamy

V. Ramaswamy has translated Subimal Misra’s The Golden Gandhi Statue from America: Early Stories, Wild Animals Prohibited: Stories, Anti-Stories, and This Could Have Become Ramayan Chamar’s Tale: Two Anti-Novels, Manoranjan Byapari’s novel The Runaway Boy, and Memories of Arrival: A Voice from the Margins by Adhir Biswas. His translation of Shahidul Zahir’s Life and Political Reality: Two Novellas was published in 2022.

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Haunting and apocalyptic … a literature of the future - Siddhartha Deb

Arresting … they amplify our sense of what fiction can do - Amit Chaudhuri

Unforgettable - Jerry Pinto

Short, pithy, compact … unsettling the present and casting a dark shadow on the future - Rakhshanda Jalil, The Wire

A rare gift … Zahir synthesises hard-hitting social realism with a surge of surrealist paranoia to forge a style that keeps the reader on tenterhooks. - Somak Ghoshal, Mint

Casts a spell that leaves you wide-eyed, like a child listening to stories of faraway places - Dipanjan Sinha, The Hindu

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