Arts & Letters

DHAKA TRIBUNE SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 5, 2016

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NOVEMBER 2016

BANGLA ACADEMY , SUHRAWARDY UDYAN ROAD, DHAKA, BANGLADESHH

Poetry Bangla Poetry will have a prominent place in the Dhaka Lit Fest 2016. Here we feature two poets who will be seen in Bangla panels . For the full list of speakers visit www.dhakalitfest.com

Heads n Mohammad Nurul Huda Editor Zafar Sobhan Editor Arts & Letters Rifat Munim Contributors Sabrina Fatma Ahmad Farina Noireet Shuprova Tasneem Saquib Sarker Baizid Haque Joardar Shafayat Nazam Rasul Sabiha Akond Rupa Saudia Afrin Design Asmaul Hoque Mamun Colour Specialist Shekhor Mondol

Rabindranath’s flute n Nirmalendu Goon Those who sang with their fingers on the flute those who wrote poems at midnight -- those farmers, those factory workers who were the real makers of steel, who made biscuits and shirts for me and sari for Nilima; they all are different people now; their homes are the bastion of revolution now!

Those who sang with their fingers on the flute those who learnt from the school, or from the world, or from this civilisation, or from nature, those students and teachers and workers -they have come together and are all very different now.

They don’t sing songs anymore, they’ve all become different people now.

Everywhere you see heads: dark heads, golden heads, heads with luxuriant hair.

You see only heads,

progenitors of scenes,

material world,

world of ideas.

On the top you see hair or grass or a roof

of leaves; inside you find brain as you find fire

or watery expanse in the womb of the earth.

Heads of various kinds;

round heads, square heads, all with steadfast goals.

In the field they remain steady, they grow restless when they march in processions.

Classic heads move on river banks, on the wide green fields, on the white sands of the Sahara, or in Greece or Ithaca

or the equatorial zone.

In the sun the helmets glitter.

This ancient earth, the favoured child of the universe, turns on its axis in history or geography, and these heads turn on two feet, nude all over.

Those who thrust wooden ploughs into the heart of the soil, those artists, those labourers who sang with their fingers on the flute, who dreamt in their sleep; leaving the village by the Dhaleswari river they are all rushing towards the city now!

They threw their ploughs away and have taken up iron-made arms; in their foreheads flash the red ribbons; In the exultation of triumphing over the city, they call Rabindranath independence; they call his songs sten guns.

They run from one sunny spot to another, seek a cool shaded path in the dark.

Disappointed, the entire scene throbs

as they loudly shout.

In the forest the lion roars

Those who sang with their fingers on the flute, those who wrote poems at midnight -they all are farmers now -seasoned farmers of revolution.

For you, the barrel of a gun has become a flute in my hand too!

while in the universe of the housewives roar the carriers of sun-scathed heads.

(Translated by Rifat Munim)

(Translated by Kabir Chowdhury)

Editor’s note

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t’s November – that time of the year when the heat softens; when this change in the weather is communicated by that part of our mind where imagination and creative energies prevail over our mundanities; when writers, poets, musicians, artists from all over the world come together at the grounds of Bangla Academy to carve newer avenues of thoughts through cultural and literary exchange.

It’s only expected that the Arts & Letters team would dedicate the November issue to the Dhaka Lit Fest 2016, now in its sixth year with increasing success and vibrancy.

Working for the November issue was one of a gargantuan task of literary and intellectual exercise. Sitting with the features team, who extended

their help to face up to the challenge of writing about the DLF authors under a tight deadline, we racked our brains chalking out elaborate plans to strike a balance. We were overwhelmed by the number of authors attending this year and saddened by the realization that we have to be selective while also maintaining the position that we don’t subscribe to the so-called binaries of good/bad or big/small authors and attach equal value to everyone.

In this issue, we introduce readers to many of the DLF authors and artists but more importantly, we give them a picture of the widening range of the festival that aims at bringing in writers not only from the hegemonic languages but also from under-represented ones, upholding diversity of views and literatures. l

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SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 5, 2016

Interview & Poetry

Being part of diaspora is imaginatively vivifying n Arts & Letters Desk

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orn in Bangalore in 1954, Vijay moved to America at the age of five. His poetry collections include Wild Kingdom, The Long Meadow and 3 Sections, as well as many essays, reviews, and memoir fragments. His work has been widely published, anthologized and recognized with many honours, most recently the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry and, in 2015, the Award of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Vijay will appear in a number of panels at the Dhaka Lit Fest 2016. When approached, he kindly agreed to give Arts & Letters an interview via email. Here’s what he promptly sent back:

controversial currently in the States, but it has always bequeathed to me a complex and problematic existence. I’ve often been seen as a stranger here, however assimilated (and I’m pretty thoroughly assimilated). If you want something succinct about my work, it might be this: I don’t know if I’m an American--that seems to up to others to decide. I do know, though, that I’m an American poet.

How much of your diasporic experience has shaped your poetry?

I think it gave me an outsider’s consciousness, and an outsider’s consciousness, richly and complexly conceived (and, of course, people who are otherwise very much a part of their society can also possess such a consciousness) is I think at the heart of what makes an artist an artist. Socially, being a part of a diaspora is difficult; imaginatively it is strengthening and vivifying. l

What are you reading at the moment?

I’m rereading Kenneth Burke’s Grammar of Motives. Also, Mark Strand’s Collected Poems, for an essay I’m writing. And in preparation for my trip to your profound country Richard Eaton’s The Rise of Islam on the Bengal Frontier, which is a model of scholarly excellence.

What are you writing at the moment?

The essay I just mentioned. Mark Strand was a good friend of mine and one of the great poets of our era. He died in 2014, and I’m writing in celebration of him and of his generation of poets.

Which poet has influenced you the most?

I couldn’t reduce it to only one. I think middle-period Robert Lowell and Elizabeth Bishop--they were dominant mid-century American poets, who had much in common with each other--most influenced my technique. Auden and Yeats gave me a sense of what the semantic field, the terrain of the poem, is.

And a host of contemporary American poets showed me the way to a voice-Strand, again, John Ashbery; James Schuyler; Galway Kinnell, when I was first starting out; Gary Snyder.

Tell us in short something about your poetry.

I write very much at the center of the American tradition, though that might seem a little strange, because I came to America as a small child, in the late nineteen-fifties. I’m an immigrant, I wasn’t born here, as so many Bangladeshis and other South Asians are now. As you might know, immigration is particularly

Imaginary Number n Vijay Seshadri The mountain that remains when the universe is destroyed is not big and is not small.

Big and small are comparative categories, and to what could the mountain that remains when the universe is destroyed be compared?

Consciousness observes and is appeased.

The soul scrambles across the screes.

The soul, like the square root of minus 1, is an impossibility that has its uses.

(This is the first poem from Vijay’s collection 3 Sections)

French exit n Steven J Fowler

alone with the alone Plotinus Hunger is the best cook, its short range roving taste pleases the softest palette.

That is the lowest common denominator.

The retinue of folding chairs who’ll follow you, if you let them, giving news of how right you are, of how they were the ones wrong.

A letter to my dear William why do you still hunt for game?

It’s 2016.

Promises like leather gloves, embarrassing, like sunglasses indoors.

A ships sails in, with a tricolour flag.

A wolf falls into its pit.

Through sheer graft a person forges happiness like a dry dock without time for spying on their love.

(This poem is from Fowler’s next book to be out early next year)

[Steven J Fowler is a poet and artist in the modernist and avant-garde traditions, across poetry, fiction, theatre, sonic art, visual art, installation and performance. He has published five collections of poetry. He is the poetry editor of 3am magazine, Lecturer at Kingston University, teaches at Tate Modern and is the curator of the Enemies project.]

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ARTS & LETTERS

Translation

‘This year’s focus on Asian literature...’ n Arts & Letters Desk

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eborah Smith’s translations from the Korean include two novels by Han Kang, The Vegetarian (winner of the 2016 International Man Booker Prize) and Human Acts; and two by Bae Suah, A Greater Music and Recitation. In 2015 Deborah completed a PhD at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, on contemporary Korean literature and founded Tilted Axis, a non-profit press focusing on contemporary and cutting-edge Asian fiction in translation. The Dhaka Lit Fest 2016 will see her interacting with writers and translators from many Asian countries.

In an email, Arts & Letters requested her for an interview and here’s what she promptly sent back:

What are you reading at the moment?

I just finished Papi by Rita Indiana, translated from the Dominican Spanish by Achy Obejas, and started Rituals of Restlessness by Yaghoub Yadali, translated from the Iranian by Sara Khalili.

What are you writing at the moment?

I’m working on a translation of a short story collection by Korean author Bae Suah. She and I just came back from a book tour to celebrate the launch of her novel A Greater Music, which was actually the first book I ever translated. The tour took us all across the US, and it was a wonderful opportunity for me to get to know the author – personally enjoyable and also useful professionally.

What inspired you to translate Korean literature?

Well, literary translation itself was the only potential career I could come up with; I’ve always loved literature, and tended to read more in translation than not, I think because the UK’s literary scene seemed alienatingly

middle-class to someone from my background. Then I had to learn a language, and Korean seemed a good choice: there was barely anything available in English, yet I knew South Korea was a modern, developed country, presumably with a rich literary tradition. So it was part intellectual curiosity and part pragmatism – I needed it to be a language that I could get funding to study.

You founded Tilted Axis to publish cutting-edge Asian fiction and Panty was your debut publication. Would you be interested in bringing out more quality translations of Bangla fiction?

Absolutely. We have three main aims for the press: to publish under-represented writing, which is an intersection of original language, style, content, and often its author’s gender. To publish it properly, in a way that makes it clear that this is art, not anthropology. And to spotlight the importance of translation in making cultures less dully homogenous.

So, a contemporary author writing in Bangla, writing fiction that’s stylistically and/or linguistically innovative, whose narrative doesn’t conform to the stereotypes of fiction from the region, would definitely be of interest to us.

How are you feeling about attending the Dhaka Lit Fest 2016?

Very excited! It’s my first time visiting the subcontinent, and I’ve heard great things about the festival from previous years’ participants. Plus, this year’s focus on Asian literature is obviously useful for me as a publisher – I’m always scouting for authors and books we might publish at Tilted Axis. This year’s lineup includes three Tilted Axis authors, Sangeeta Bandyopadhyay, Prabda Yoon and Hamid Ismailov, plus our wonderful translator Arunava Sinha, so I’m looking forward to the five of us getting together for a chat and possibly an embarrassing selfie. l

Translating Sangeeta Bandyopadhyay Arunava Sinha has extensively translated Bangla fiction and poetry into English. His English translation of Sangeeta Bandyopadhyay’s Panty has recently been published by Tilted Axis, the non-profit publishing endeavour founded by Deborah Smith. All three of them are going to attend the DLF 2016.

n Arunava Sinha

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angeeta Bandyopadhyay is probably the most deceptive contemporary Bengali writer in India. Her vocabulary is no different from those of her peers, but she brings to her writing an innate ability to extract more – and different – meaning from the same words.

And even after the closest reading, the translator is sometimes left wondering whether everything has been carried over to the new language.

Bandyopadhyay, it may be said without suggesting that this is a handicap, writes a similar story in many of her novels. There is always the solitary woman, the men who have promised her the earth and then backed out, the heightened sensuality, and the lurking hunger for a spiritual salvation. The incidents change, the settings vary, but the characters and their quest are often the same across her fiction.

Why should this matter to the translator, who, after all, is only led by the text of each book? It’s just that there is both a continuity between her books and a certain distinctiveness of voice in each case. And both qualities need to be preserved through the translation.

Adding to the challenge is the fact that Bandyopadhyay’s writing is sexually

outspoken. When read in the original Bengali, a language not given to direct expression of sexual urges or conflicts, her prose packs a raw punch. However, English is far more adept at accommodating the same features within its everyday lexicon, with the result that the translated text can seem far less forceful. Indeed, Bandyopadhyay in English sometimes reads a little more rounded, a little less angular, than in Bengali.

Of all the women writers I have translated, Bandyopadhay is the one who makes me wonder whether I would have appreciated – and, by extension, translated – her better had I been a woman. I have a suspicion that, somehow, men and women read her in different ways, not because of any conscious choice she makes, but because she unconsciously taps a vein of sensibilities inextricably linked to gender.

And so, re-creating – indeed, re-living – through another language the surreal journeys of Bandyopadhyay’s protagonists through the very real physical and emotional spaces they inhabit is a parallel form of navigating her fiction.

The translator should be gender-less, but Bandyopadhyay has the uncanny ability to make the male reader feel a sense of profound and uneasy guilt, which I cannot sidestep even during the process of translation.

Does this lead to the creation of a work whose nuances may have changed a little bit? The answer to that is not within my grasp. But translating Bandyopadhyay reacquaints me with one of the reasons that I translate: it is the closest, most visceral, form of reading a text there can be. And this is one writer whose books yield a great deal more on such intimate reading. l

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Translation

Syed Shamsul Haq in tribute n Rifat Munim & Ahsan Akbar

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here are some writers without whose existence the Dhaka Lit Fest (DLF) cannot actually be conceptualised. It is not so because their works were launched and talks featured in DLF many times over.

It is rather so because their achievements in literature are so big that one perhaps cannot imagine any literary event of true potential without them; because their vision of literature is so rich that the DLF has drawn unrestrainedly from their works to shape its own vision that lies in embracing diversity and divergent views.

Syed Shamsul Haq was one such writer who left us forever on September 27. His body of work is so vast and powerful that most of us are touched by it in some way or other. The DLF editions of the previous years were entwined with him in more ways than one. According to the festival directors, his unstinting support for DLF provided them with a solid ground on which to stand and continue their work against the festival’s detractors. In fact, some of the most memorable panels about translation and bridging the language barrier saw him interact with such big names as Bangla fiction writer Hasan Azizul Haque and Welsh poet and playwright Gillian Clarke. It was also as part of the festival that Syed Haq enjoyed being on stage with Vikram Seth, reciting beneath a banyan tree that graces Bangla Academy and their recitations echoed with an enthralled audience.

Syed Haq was an artist in the truest sense of the word. Beyond his books, his aesthetics and mannerisms never failed to impress anyone who met him. His interest in world literature and his love for the arts was evident when he would be speaking at the festival or at a small gathering of read-

ers and writers. Never one to boast or come across haughty, and yet it was impossible not to feel humbled by the sheer reach of erudition. He always enjoyed exchanging ideas with writers at the festival, and he would stress to the directors, the importance of taking Bangla literature to rest of the world. His vision was farsighted and clear: he could see the role the festival, because of its international stature, could play in creating that platform for Bangla, and he was delighted with the first concrete step – the introduction of Library of Bangladesh series, which saw two of his novellas translated into English and launched at DLF last year.

We are really happy to learn that this year’s DLF will give a fitting tribute to him and his work through discussions and staging one of his novellas, Neel Dongshon, which is one of the modern classics of Bangladeshi literature. The short novel may have been published in the 1970s but it remains extremely relevant to our times: the struggle of the word against brute forces is still, unfortunately, ongoing.

Syed Shamsul Haq may have left us for another world, but fortunately for us, not only we have his books, we have an international literary festival in his beloved city, and we look forward to celebrating him and his works. l

An Ocean of Sorrow n Mir Mosharraf Hossain

Bishad Sindhu or An Ocean of Sorrow is a work of fiction by Mir Mosharraf Hossain (1847-1912), a Bengali novelist, playwright and essayist. It is the first substantial work of fiction by a Bengali Muslim writer, and one of the earliest Bengali novels. Fakrul Alam has translated this Bengali classic soon to be brought out

by Bangla Academy. Alam will talk about his experience of translating this work at the DLF 2016. Here we carry an excerpt from the novel’s BOOK III.

Zayneb’s Lament

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hy is there no one around there? Why is no human being on view?

But there are still those in the rooms set aside for them. No changes were visible thus in the quarter where Lord Husayn’s kinsmen and women had been kept. From here a cry could be heard, the wailing of a woman, a tragic-sounding tone, laced with pain at what had happened, but the perspective unique as was the voice and the thought being articulated.

“Alas! Where am I, where is Zayneb? The loyal wife of a small businessman, a man from a poor and impoverished but respectable family? The spouse of an ordinary man who once used to earn a small sum of money through his labors?

What did we have to do with royalty and kingly dispositions, with a member of a family descended from royalty, who pursues pleasure and satisfaction; what did I have to be involved with him and his pleasures? Why did I end up in the king’s zenana? That Zayneb would be seen inside Medina’s holy palace was an astonishing development; that she could be a prisoner in the royal prison of Damascus was an even more amazing twist of fate for her. What do I have to do with this prison? Alas! Alas! If anyone chose to examine the events of my life closely and reflect on what had happened to me, he would find evidence that would lead him to conclude that this unfortunate woman was the prime cause of the ocean of sorrow. It would seem that it was Zayneb who was the chief cause of all these cataclysmic events. Alas! Alas! It was for me that the family of the Prophet of

FAKRUL ALAM is Professor of English at the University of Dhaka and a member of its senate.

His publications include Imperial Entanglements and Literature in English (Writer’s Ink: Dhaka, 2007); South Asian Writers in English (Detroit: Thomson Gale, 2006); Jibananada Das: Selected Poems (Dhaka: University Press Limited, 1999) Light, Muhammad, had to suffer such torture! Oh, woe is me! Where will I find a place to be in now? I am a sinner! I am an ogre who had devoured everything!

For me the doors of hell are wide open! How agonizing! It was I that induced hatred in Zaada, who had hitherto been so soft a person! It was this unfortunate wretch’s beauty that intensified the flame in Zaada’s mind till it burnt with double, treble and even five-fold intensity! How much more will this unfortunate and weak heart have to endure? How much will this woman who was so loyal to her husband have to go through? Can the flame that burn in one’s mind be doused without one’s own spouse? Ultimately, it leaves the spouse and scalds the husband. When one wants something, and if fate has willed that it shall be so, how long does one have to wait for the desire to be fulfilled? To seek is to find then. To satiate Maimuna’s wishes, Zaada was necessary. To fulfill what Zaada coveted Maimuna was necessary. In time the two met and both felt that they had struck gold. To find a woman apply poison – oh unbearable deed that one cannot even talk about – poison – poison of the most virulent kind!” (Silence) l

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ARTS & LETTERS

5 reasons why one shouldn’t miss the DLF n Arts & Letters Desk

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hat time of the year is upon us again, when the Dhaka Lit Fest brings you a host of talks, performances, workshops, and so on. This event marks a resurgence of Bangladeshi literary culture while vigorously engaging other cultures far beyond our borders. It introduces you to eminent thinkers and writers from around the world, inspiring your inner writer. But if you are still unsure whether this is really the place for you, here are the five reasons why you shouldn’t miss out on this rare opportunity.

Biggest literary festival in South Asia The DLF is considered one of the biggest literary festivals in South Asia. This is not just a three-day event about books and literature, it is also about art, history, music, different forms of performance, journalism, human rights, and so forth. So, whether you are interested in feminism, science fiction or global politics – this is the place for you.

tries and cultures that are usually kept at the margins in lit fests around the world. The international lineup of authors and artists this year will feature a hugely diverse set of speakers and what’s more.

Opportunity to meet big writers and discover new writers Did you ever expect to see a noble laureate up close, hear him talk about literature or his life? You could put it a bit differently: how often do you get a chance to be on the hunt for autographs from a Man Booker International winner, or a Pulitzer winner for that matter? The answer is obvious – unless you are lucky and abroad, you don’t expect to see a noble laureate walking or talking a little way from you; you don’t get a chance to collect autographs from big international award-winning writers. But this year for the first time, the DLF will see a noble laureate, a Man Booker International winner and a Pulitzer winner are attending the festival together. Now it is up to you to decide whether you want to miss this opportunity or not.

The big names apart, the DLF is also unique in that it always invites new, emerging writers from the hegemonic as well as under-represented languages and countries. So, there is a world of new ideas out there, and the DLF is your opportunity to engage with new conversations and let your own ideas be shaped and influenced by them.

Cultural education and exchange The DLF is broadening its horizon every year, bringing in authors from coun-

Books you’ve never accessed before If you are a reader who likes to go beyond the bestsellers and classics, and read widely and across genres, then you will know the disappointment that one often experiences when browsing the book stores in the capital.

The DLF book stalls not only have a wide range of authors from all over the world, you are also bound to come across books that you may not have ever discovered in the city or even on online portals like Goodreads. Who knows?

You might even discover your new favourite book there!

Socialising with kindred spirits At the risk of being accused of a certain level of intellectual snobbery, it can often be difficult to find like-minded people at regular social gatherings in the city. Schools tend to focus only on the curriculum, there are hardly any libraries and even fewer book clubs. Whether you’re a writer, reader or literary nut, the prospect of having a hot cup of tea over a heated conversation about the new DLF-inspired ideas bouncing around in your head with fellow literary enthusiasts, and that too on the historic premises of the Bangla Academy – can be enough reason to make sure you don’t miss out this amazing festival. l

Time to talk movies n Arts & Letters Desk

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f you are a movie buff with an eye for the latest alternative trends in Bangla and Hindi films, you’d better note down Indranil Roychowdhury and Adavaita Kala will soon be in town.

Indranil has shot to fame since he made his first feature film Phoring in 2013. Those of you who’re still thinking Advaita is not a familiar name, not even in circles where mainstream films are treated with scorn -- will surely remember the film Kahani, which owes its critical success to the autobiographical book Almost Single. Kala is the bestselling author of the book and the story of Kahani is based on this book. The film won several awards, including three National Film Awards and five Filmfare Awards.

At the Dhaka Lit Fest 2016, Indranil and Advaita will talk about script-writing and their journey with the film industry and milestones of their careers, with others of their ilk. Whether you want to hunt them for autographs or ask them something when questions are taken from the floor, you shouldn’t miss the panels they will be in, and note down again theirs is going to be one of the most crowded panels.

In 2012 Kahaani , directed by Sujoy Gosh, was released where Vidya Balan played the pregnant wife out on the streets of Kolkata in search of her husband. It was based on the real life experiences of Advaita. “I am a novelist, that is the form I am comfortable with and very early on I knew this would be a novel, so I wrote the story as a novel exploring literary devices like the interior monologue,” she said in an interview with the Times of India.

Indranil Roy chowdhury, a feature filmmaker from Kolkata, waited more than a decade to pitch his script to the right producer. 18 years after he graduated from FTII Pune, he made his first feature film Phoring, a film about a boy named Phoring and his intriguing relationship with his new school teacher, Doel. “I know many who are armed with a great script but because they don’t want stars they don’t get financiers. I just hope one day they make their films and people make them superhits, irrespective of stars.” Let’s keep our fingers crossed that they don’t cancel the Dhaka tour at the last minute. l

For the full list of speakers visit www.dhakalitfest.com

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Interview

DLF to showcase our rich heritage to outer world Ahsan Akbar, a poet and a director of the Dhaka Lit Fest 2016, talks with Arts & Letters about his experience of embarking on a literary journey that aims to bring the literary world together This is the first time a Nobel Laureate in Literature is going to attend the Dhaka Lit Fest. How do you feel about this as a director?

To have one of the greatest living writers supporting Dhaka Lit Fest, by coming all the way to Dhaka, is a testimony to the festival’s strength and continual success. As a director of the festival, it is of course an absolute honour and privilege to welcome VS Naipaul to Bangladesh, and I speak for not only my two co-directors, but for everyone in our country who has a passion for books.

When we broke away from Hay Festival last year and renamed the festival after our beloved capital city, which hosts it, all overwhelmingly welcomed the decision. Nonetheless, there were concerns from pessimistic corners about the festival’s continuity and reputation going forwards. I’m glad to say that in spite of severe security concerns last year, we had world class speakers and we will continue to do so with this year’s edition and in future.

We’ve heard some of the world’s emerging writers of poetry, fiction and nonfiction in the English language are attending this year. Would you shed some light on that?

Aside from Sir Vidia, whose presence makes the event all very special, this year we are also looking forward to welcoming many exciting names in the literary world, including Vijay Seshadri and Deborah Smith, winners of the Pulitzer and Man Booker International Prize respectively.

It is impossible to list all the wonderful names here but I could highlight a few: the celebrated Catalan poet Carles Torner from Barcelona, slam poetry champion Vuyelwa Maluleke from South Africa, Marcia Lynx Qualey who single-handedly brought Arab literature to the forefront through her blog arablit. org, and my friend Alex Preston, English novelist and literary critic, who has been instrumental in encouraging several British writers to attend this year’s festival.

Evidently this year writers have been selected from many different parts of the world across the continents. Why this emphasis on diversity?

Human emotions are the same across languages, cultures, continents - it’s how one expresses them in their writing that makes an impact. We also know from reading foreign fiction that we have more in common than we may think.

The feelings of love, joy, loss, despair, etc., are essentially the same no matter which part of the world one inhabits. It is one of our key aims to make Dhaka Lit Fest as international as possible. Last year we had a Cuban writer, Yoss, attend our festival and he is the leading sci-fi writer of his generation in Spanish language. This year, for example, we have invited Hamid Ismailov, an Uzbek writer, who told me stories of growing up in the erstwhile Soviet Union in the seventies listening to radio news about Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman.

The idea of a festival is to exchange ideas, share stories, buy books, and for us Bangladeshis, Dhaka Lit Fest is a beautiful platform to showcase some of the best aspects of our rich heritage and culture to the wider world, and that includes our unparalleled warm hospitality.

In the previous years, we’ve seen a strong representation of local writers, poets, artists, actors and musicians. How are you going about it this year?

Quite simply, there will be more representation of local writers and artists.

As with previous years, this year’s programme will have significant portions dedicated to Bangla literature from the past and present, discussions on theatre, cinema, current affairs, as well as our tradition of Baul music and con-

versations on the deep philosophy behind the lyrics and poetry of Lalon. We will have a special performance of Neel Dongshon, as our special tribute to our beloved Syed ShamsulHaq, who will be dearly missed this year.

What in your view will be the strongest aspect of DLF 2016?

It is unfortunate that Bangladesh has been in the international news media for terror attacks since 2013. The killings of bloggers, writers, and activists did a great deal of harm to the image of our country. The strongest aspect of DLF 2016 – I believe – is the fact that we are able to stage the festival just a few months after the horrific incident of July 1 this year. After the England cricket team’s successful tour of Dhaka and Chittagong, DLF will echo what the world needs to hear: Bangladesh is open for business.

We can only do this because we are standing up together, and without the excellent support from our government, we wouldn’t have been able to do it.We are delighted with the show of support from our sponsors, our national security agencies, our partner organisations from abroad and our excited audience members who are raving about the festival on social media.

The Dhaka Lit Fest does not belong to the directors, the sponsors or the government. We are the executioners of the festival and we are grateful for having the opportunity to be able to run it. It essentially belongs to every citizen of Bangladesh. It has to be supported by anyone or everyone who loves Dhaka, loves Bangladesh or feels – at some level – some connection to our country. We keep this festival free and open to all, and it is not tucked away in some five-star hotel, because we are determined to keep it accessible for everyone who love books, who enjoy writing, reading or simply listening to world class speakers in inspiring conversations.

This is for you, please come and claim your festival. l

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ARTS & LETTERS

Sir Vidia

V S Naipaul: the shock of the new n Khademul Islam

Khademul Islam is a writer, critic and translator. He is the editor of Bengal Lights magazine.

I first encountered V S Naipaul in 1972, sometime in March as I recall. The timing could not have been better.

We were then living in Karachi, in a housing colony on Garden Road. We were Bengalis who were no longer citizens, trapped in Pakistan and waiting to get out of there to Bangladesh. Waiting, with our lives on hold. As the days passed, quite unexpectedly, I discovered that I was free in a way I had never been before. None of the old things – exams, classes, textbooks, schedules – mattered a hoot anymore. My parents couldn’t care less. In that void, I took to reading. I scoured for books, piling them up in a corner of my room. I read them, one by one, in a dreamlike state – it was reading at its purest. Even now, those books are vividly with me. Around us, Pakistan was reeling from being cut down to size, with half its vaunted army in Indian POW camps, with Bhutto ranting and workers rioting in the streets. But I sat in the still eye of this storm and kept reading, the boy in the bubble. When, quite unexpectedly, Naipaul came calling.

Shampoo was a few years older than me, the source of his nickname a perpetual mystery. That mid-morning in March I found him standing in the middle of his drawing room, eyes closed, arms waving in the air as he conducted the orchestra playing on the Grundig radiogram – yes, that’s what they were called back then. Burt Baccharach, who I had never heard of. But then Shampoo had always sprung new things on me – the proper way to leg glance, books by A J Cronin and James Michener when I didn’t know them, even Sherlock Holmes, or later, steering me to The Ipcress File running at the Rex by saying that only a dunce would miss checking out Michael Caine. As Burt gave way to James Last, I saw a paperback on the sofa and picked it up. An Area of Darkness. The author’s name made me sit up in surprise. Indian. And Hindu, one of those unpronounceable ones, though not a Bengali Hindu since it was ‘’suraj’’ and not “surja’’ in the name.

Who was this? Could I borrow it? Yes, Shampoo said, since he was in the middle of another book.

So was I, but didn’t let on. I trotted off to home but put it aside while I finished The Spy Who Came In From The Cold. Only then did I turn to the paperback – crinkled and worn – thinking, right-ho, Mister Suraj, who you, man, and whatcho saying, men-men, no. But then, as I got past the beginning pages, something clicked. Audibly. I was in. I had locked on to the book’s grid of heat, sweat, cobbler and chase for a liquor license among Indian clerkdom – to a world instantly recognizable outside my windows. There was no going back now, and I read it in one go.

The shock of the new, the shock of the truly original, is that rarest of experiences. That is what An Area of Darkness delivered to me on that distant day in that far-off city. It is hard to put into words, to write in an unmediated way the raw feeling of it as I read it in that context, at that time, at barely 19 years of age. It is hard to keep it to that frame because a lifetime of later reading of Naipaul’s books, the differing judgements arrived at over time, keeps threatening to intrude into this write-up and ruin it, warp it to some blended knitwear of high-brow, fatuous nonsense about the author and his work. And it is doubly hard to tell it like it was – that shock of the new – without subsiding

into the worst of cliches – ‘opened up a new world,’ or ‘took me on a journey’ or that supreme horror that has both ‘journey’ and ‘discovery’ in it, along with ‘spiritual’… Christ, no!

So what I can say – what I should only say – is how I felt as Naipaul ripped up the old templates for me. In English books, India came via a filter, face scrubbed and hair neatly parted. But Naipaul couldn’t give a toss about that, he was the ungodly opposite, sparing nothing and nobody in a searingly personal engagement with every kind of shit that crossed his path that would have had a Left Bank existentialist wiped out and panting over his authentic shot of absinthe. That was dynamite. And the English he wrote, the non-fiction travelogue form he had marshaled into the service of that English – that too was pure dynamite, sticks of it. And Naipaul was so on edge so much of the time, teeth gritted, despairing, seething like the streets of Karachi outside the colony, ready to blow up at the oddest things – to put all that in his elegantly-phrased bender, now that was real expletive-deleted dynamite!

It wasn’t that I wasn’t aware – instinctively, I was – of the faultlines running along the spine of the tale. How could Vidiadhar, growing up in a Hindu family in Trinidad, be so shocked by India?

How could he rage at taboos – the dirty Brahmin cook fit to cook for the Brahmins but never the spotless Dalit – yet not see it full-blown in himself? Taboos about food were a primal thing with him. On the last leg of his trip to England, on the launch to Southampton, tormented by fear of “unclean”food, he ate only “sweets,” i.e., ice-cream, downing it, to the astonishment of the English purser, by the bucketload. But these were overriden for me by the book’s stiff-backed refusal to please and wanting to be liked. Naipaul would only write the difficult book, and let the chips fall where they may.

I grew up in a Pakistan where India was officially a caricature, a repellent thing of sticks and glue. Even as I read the book in Karachi, Pakistanis wore shoes with tiny stickers on them saying ‘Crush India’. But Naipaul drove a truck through all that garbage, gave me a sense of the real McCoy – the middle section is unsurpassed writing on Kashmir in the early ‘60s. Later that same year, we escaped from Pakistan to Bangladesh. Passing through India, I caught glimpses of the things that had filled Naipaul with dread. But India was also marvelous and light and lovely, so unlike the horrid images nurtured in Pakistan. It had a singular beauty which I perhaps might have missed had I not read An Area of Darkness so well, so recently, perhaps would not have stopped to see the flickering pyramid of lights in a huge temple at night had I not gained that knife-blade edge of awareness of the land.

Now, happily, shortly, Sir Vidiadhar Surajprasad Naipaul will be in Dhaka. It’s been a long time since that day at Shampoo’s. It’s been a long time coming. l

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DHAKA TRIBUNE

SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 5, 2016

Sir Vidia

Five things you (probably) didn’t know about him n Sabrina Fatma Ahmad Recently, Bob Dylan winning the Nobel Prize for Literature had social media up in such a frenzy, it’s hard to imagine a more divisive literary figure. With the DLF drawing near, it would do well to remember another Nobel Laureate who’s spent practically his entire adult life being adored and reviled in equal measures, and has actively courted controversy all through his career.

We’re talking, of course, about Vidiadhar Surajprasad Naipaul. Born on August 17, 1932, in Trinidad and Tobago, he rose to fame soon after moving to the UK at age 22. His grandparents emigrated from India to work as indentured labours in Trinidad’s sugar plantations.

Here are some interesting facts about VS Naipaul.

He had a nervous breakdown while studying at Oxford, and spent all his money on a trip to Spain When young Naipaul won a Trinidad Government scholarship that allowed him to study at any institution of higher learning in the British Commonwealth, he opted for Oxford. Once there, however, he quickly became depressed, feeling that his writing was too contrived. In April 1952, he took an impulsive trip to Spain. In a biography, he admits to spending too much money, and describes the episode as a “nervous breakdown.” Despite such early struggles, Naipaul would go on to earn the reputation of being the steeliest of writers.

Later in life, he would go on to travel extensively through the West Indies, India, South America, Muslim countries of Asia, the United States, and Africa, and in addition to his novels and short stories, make a name for himself as a travel essayist.

Khadija Bradshaw

He wrote his first story collection in five weeks Most writers spend years in anonymity as several discarded drafts and early works gather dust. Not Naipaul. He banged out the entirety of Miguel Street, a collection of stories set in wartime Trinidad and Tobago, based off his childhood memories - in just five weeks.

And while this kind of pace might suggest a rush job, the collection went on to win the Somerset Maugham Award in 1961, the same year he wrote the entirety of his novel A House for Mr Biswas in pencil. Writers and their quirks, right?

Sabrina Fatma Ahmad is features editor, Dhaka Tribune.

His first novel was published when he was only 25 At an age when most aspiring writers are only beginning to regret the florid poems of their high-school years, Naipaul’s debut novel The Mystic Masseur was published by André Deutsch, the British publisher who had rejected a collection of his short stories thinking an “unknown Caribbean author” (Miguel Street), would not be profitable, and encouraged the young writer to attempt a novel. If that isn’t enough to inspire you, The Mystic Masseur went on to win the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize in 1958, and was later adapted into a film by Ivory Merchant in 2001.

He has a Booker Prize In a Free State, which won the Booker Prize for Fiction in 1971, consists

of a framing narrative, involving a visitor to Egypt, and encompasses three short stories, all analogies on the price of freedom. This is arguably one of his lesser-known novels.

...and a knighthood and other awards That’s right. In addition to all the awards and accolades -- Mr Stone and the Knights Companion (1963), won the Hawthornden Prize -- he was knighted in 1989. He would go on to receive the David Cohen British Literature Prize by the Arts Council of England in 1993 and the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2001.

That trophy shelf must be a heavy one indeed.

Love him for his work, hate his politics, but there’s no denying that he is one fascinating personality. Don’t miss an opportunity to see the man up close during the Dhaka Lit Fest 2016! l

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ARTS & LETTERS

Freedom of expression

‘Authorities don’t like to see reality as it is’ n Arts & Letters Desk

B

orn into a deeply religious Uzbek family of Mullahs living in Kyrgyzstan, Hamid Ismailov is an Uzbek journalist and writer who was forced to flee Uzbekistan in 1992 and came to the UK where he took a job with the BBC World Service. He has published dozens of books in Uzbek, Russian, French, German, Turkish and other languages. Deborah Smith’s publishing endeavour Tilted Axis is going to publish one of his novels next year.

At the Dhaka Lit Fest 2016 Hamid will be featured as one of the most important contemporary writers of fiction. When approached through email, he kindly agreed to give Arts & Letters an interview. Excerpts:

What are you reading at the moment?

OrhanPamuk’s Red-Hair Woman in Turkish and Viktor Pelevin’s The Watcher in Russian and as it is reflected either journalistically or fictionally in my work. As Sinyavskionce said: ‘My differences with the authorities are of stylistic nature’.

What are you writing at the moment?

I’ve just finished a novel called Manaschi in Uzbek. Manaschi are Kyrgyz bards/ healers/shamans reciting Manas-- the longest human epic, consisting nearly of a million verses. They are revered as people who are connected with the world of spirits and get the initiation (mostly in the form of dreams) from supernatural forces. My novel is a tragicomedy of a former radio-presenter, who wrongly interprets one of his dreams and thinks that it was the initiation. He witnesses a full scale of the epic’s wrath on his life. It’s about the interaction of the Tradition with Modernity in a mountainous village, populated by Tajiks and Kyrgyzs – two types of people of Central Asia – sedentary and nomads.

In a Guardian interview you said, “They’re trying to erase my identity.” Would you elaborate on this a little vis-a-vis your fiction?

Maybe it was an overstatement, especially in our day and age of internet and social networks. I can publish my work online, whoever wants to read my work could access it with a bit of online creativity, even if my name of a writer, as well as my books are officially banned in Uzbekistan. Maybe what I was unhappy about is the fact that I write primarily for my readers in Uzbek, yet, when my books are reviewed and discussed in many other languages, but Uzbek, you could understand my situation.

Which fiction writer has influenced you the most?

Not one, but many, not just the greats, but also second-rated ones, different at different age, in different languages, in different forms, for different reasons and different level and type of influences. But ultimately you influence yourself the most. To keep the lamp, when the house constantly moves – isn’t it the strongest influence of all?

You have been in exile for over two decades now. Do you think it was caused by the critical content of your fiction?

It’s partly maybe because of my journalism, and partly maybe because of my literary work. In both cases the authorities don’t like to see the reality as it is

How do you feel about attending the Dhaka Lit fest 2016 which will have freedom of thought and expression as one of its main highlights this year?

I very much look forward to it. Our people share lots in common. One of the greatest Uzbek modern poets Chulpon (1893-1938) answering similar questions had expressed his disillusion both with the classic and modern literature, naming dozens of famous names in whom he couldn’t find any satisfaction. And all of a sudden he named Rabindranath Tagore and called him ‘a golden bridge’ between the Orient and the Occident, between Tradition and Modernity. So quoting Tagore, it’s music for me, which fills the infinite between two souls. l

Can they be silenced? n Shuprova Tasneem Last month, Margaret Atwood chose Bangladeshi publisher and writer Ahmedur Rashid Chowdhury, also known as Tutul, as winner of the Pinter International Writer of Courage award. It was only a year ago, on October 31, 2015, that Tutul was stabbed

by Islamic extremists, along with two other writers, for writing and publishing opinions that were considered to be ‘anti-Islam’. On that same fateful day, publisher Faisal Arefin Dipan was hacked to death. A year down the line, their attackers are still at large.

Dipan was not the only person who had to pay with his life for daring to exercise his right to freedom of speech. Since 2013, a number of authors, publishers and bloggers have been killed by religious extremists, and many more have fled the country after receiving threats. But these are not isolated incidents – starting from the brutal assassination attempt of poet and author Humayun Azad in 2004 to the culture of silence around the persecution of religious and ethnic minorities in Bangladesh, freedom of expression can be hard won, and there are still many Bangladeshis living a life of fear or emigrating to other countries where their opinions won’t cost them their lives.

The silencing of writers, journalists and proponents of free speech is a reality all across the world, and this is evident also in the choice of guests at the Dhaka Literary Festival. This year, the Lit Fest is geared to host one exiled speaker – Uzbek writer and journalist Hamid Ismailov.

Critics have compared Ismailov’s works to the best of Russian classics, Sufi parables and works of Western post-modernism. He was the first BBC World Service Writer in Residence. While his writing reflects stylistic innovation and elements critical of authoritative regimes, it is his unique intercultural experience that excites and draws the reader into his world. l

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Women’s writing

Do they have a different story to tell? n Shafayat Nazam Rasul This year’s DLF is set out to be a cracker. With the likes of VS Naipaul appearing in the most anticipated panels, one might think what else does it have to offer? I don’t know any of these names.

But that’s the beauty of the Dhaka Lit Fest. It sheds light on some of the

most promising emerging writers as of yet undiscovered.

This year, too, the DLF brings our attention to women writers, especially fiction writers among them. Be ye man, woman, or child, if you are an aspiring fiction writer, this year’s festival promises stellar work, and stellar discussions for you as each of these women has some inspiring stories to share with the audience.

Amy Sackville

Evei Wyld

Sackville’s debut novel, The Still Point, about two characters separated by a 100 years, won the John Llwellyn Rhys prize. An interesting narrative device, characters separated by time is not a new concept, but one that writers, especially ones in the sub-continent, would want to indulge in.

Another winner of the John Llwellyn Rhys prize, Wyld is widely recognised in the literary world as one of its best. The Daily Telegraph has hailed her as one of the 20 best British authors under the age of 40. Her first novel, After The Fire, A Still Small Voice was critically acclaimed and won several prizes worldwide.

Anjum Hasan

Antara Ganguli

Writers from no other post-colonial landscape have provided literature like the Indians have. Anjum Hasan’s debut novel, Lunatic in my Head, appeared in various shortlists for awards. It takes place in her hometown of Shillong, weaving together three seemingly disparate narratives into one cohesive masterful one.

Antara Ganguli’s Tanya Tania is a delight. Spanning two nations that can’t quite decide if they hate each other, the novel tells the stories of two Tanias/ Tanyas: One in Karachi, the other in Mumbai. Told through letters, it is a fascinating story evoking emotions, with a touch of exquisite mildness. l

Children’s literature

Of the children, for the children n Saudia Afrin

I

s there a better place for children than the Bangla Academy grounds where they can run or loiter freely, mingling with one another, without the fear of being lost in traffic or in the labyrinth of endless alleys? No, there isn’t, especially when the DLF is on.

Children’s literature has consistently constituted one of the richest sections at the DLF. In fact, some of the richest panels and sessions were geared towards the children, drawing the largest crowd. Lucy Hawking’s interactive sessions with children in 2014, and panels with Welsh Children’s Laureate Eu-

rig Salisbury and Bengali writer Mohammad Zafar Iqbal are still vivid in our memory.

The youngsters this year should look forward to a host of shows and programmes which will keep them hooked. There will be several children’s books featured and launched; and there will be two great shows designed only for children. But more than anything, the celebrated graphic novel artist Nuhash Humayun will interact with children in a long session.

Sadaf Saaz, a DLF director, said, “There will be two great shows for the children, and Brac is going to arrange another programme solely for them.”

Two children’s books will be launched at the fest: one English story by Pushpita Alam, and the other a Bengali story by Nazia Zabeen. Both the titles are brought out by Ignite Publications Limited, a new endeavour aiming to publish good quality, high standard books for children at affordable prices.

The children will also have an opportunity to meet two more children’s authors: Chador Wangmo from Bhutan and Anthony McGowan from the USA.

Chador Wangmo Chador Wangmo is a celebrated author of nine children’s books and two novels. She started her writing career with illustrated folktales for children. A teacher turned writer, she dedicates her entire time to writing. She is currently working on her first-ever superhero book, which is scheduled to be released in 2017. l

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ARTS & LETTERS

Nonfiction

Caught between a traveller and an explorer n Farina Noireet

T

ravel writing has had a profound impact on human history. From the copious notes and immaculately descriptive journals of explorers and adventurers who braved the daunting task of journeying into the unknown, historians have been able to gather invaluable information that have allowed us to glimpse into portions of our past that otherwise would have been lost to us.

The DLF this year is going to feature two of the most celebrated travel writers: VS Naipaul and Tim Cope.

Naipaul, the nobel laureate, is especially known for his wonderful fictions but his contribution to travel writing is no less towering. He has extensively travelled in North America, Europe, Asia and Africa. His travel books include The Middle Passage: Impressions of Five Societies – British, French and Dutch in the West Indies and South America, An Area of Darkness and Among the Believers.

Tim Cope belongs to the younger breed of travel writers. Recipient of the National Geographic Adventure Honoree 2007 and Australian Adventurer of the year 2006, Cope is an Australian adventurer, author and film-maker with a special interest in the traditional cultures of Central Asia and Russia.

His books about his journeys include Off the Rails: Moscow to Beijing by Bike (2003), and On the Trail of Genghis Khan: An Epic Journey Through the Land of the Nomads (2013). Cope has also made films about his journeys which include The Yenisey Expedition co-produced by the National Geographic Channel. He has directed and filmed a four-hour program for ZDF and ARTE channels in Europe titled On the Trail of Genghis Khan which was screened in Europe in February 2010.

Cope’s 6-part documentary series has been screened on Australian TV. So, the DLF 2016 will equally be exciting to those who are not big fans of fiction and who find immense pleasure in reading travelogues in particular and nonfiction in general. l

The thin line between fiction and nonfiction n Shuprova Tasneem

A

n increasing focus on journalism was evident at the Dhaka Lit Fest last year, offering insights into the political and social makeup of the modern world, with British journalist Jon Snow as one of the headliners. This year, too, brings with it a healthy dose of journalism, taking it one step further, featuring those of the investigative journalists whose nonfiction books provide you with the best of the contemporary world, revealing a world that is raw and real and yet verging on the fictional with its perfect balance of poetry and prose?

Ben Judah British journalist Ben Judah’s work has been considered Orwellian by many of his critics.

Starting his career as a reporter for Reuters in Moscow, he has travelled extensively in Russia, Central Asia and the Levant, and has covered the 2008 Russo-Georgian War, 2010 Kyrgyz Revolution and 2011 Tunisian Revolution as a conflict reporter. Like Orwell, he has used his appetite for fieldwork to gain insight into the parts of society that are often overlooked and ‘othered’, and evaluate existing institutions with a heavy dose of scepticism. His first book, Fragile Empires, uses interviews with President Vladimir Putin’s friends, foes, colleagues, government officials, business tycoons, mobsters and ordinary Russian citizens to paint a vivid portrait of the current Russian political order.

In his latest book This is London (2016), Judah delves into the immigrant subaltern of the city of his birth, often traveling in disguise to blend in, and takes apart the utopian image of contemporary London of glittering glass and postwork pints in smart suits. His work has been lauded not only for its research but for the intimacy of his portrayals. He was recently chosen as one of Forbe magazine’s 30 under 30 in European media.

Bee Rowlatt Bee Rowlatt is another writer and journalist one should be on the lookout for at the DLF 2016. Her book In Search of Mary is inspired by the life of pioneering feminist Mary Wollstonecraft, who Rowlatt has described in her blogs as her hero and inspiration. Wollstonecraft was an intrepid traveller and journeyed to Scandinavia with her baby daughter and nanny in the 18th century. Rowlatt’s book is a travelogue of Wollstonecraft’s mission to retrace her childhood hero’s steps with her own baby in tow, and is full of humorous and insightful anecdotes on feminism, motherhood and emancipation. Rowlatt is not afraid to criticise her own privilege and positionality in the modern world, and her refreshing and enthusiastic take is reflected in her personal blog, which she describes as ‘feminism. But fun.’

In Search of Mary won the UK’s ‘Real Life Reads’ 2016 and made the Independent’s Best Biographies list. She also co-wrote Talking about Jane Austen in Baghdad and is one of the writers in Virago’s Fifty Shades of Feminism. She is a regular guest on BBC Woman’s Hour and has reported for BBC World Service, Newsnight, and BBC2. l

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Journalism

Journalists under the DLF spotlignt

Garga Chatterjee

Barkha Dutt

n Saqib Sarker The vast number of luminaries that will lighten up the Dhaka Lit Fest 2016 does not only include poets and novelists but also some of the big names in today’s journalism.

For the Bangladeshis the biggest name doubtlessly is Barkha Dutt. Here she is perhaps as well known as many Bollywood celebrities thanks to the popularity of NDTV. Widely recognised as the host of the award-winning weekly talk show We The People, her fame as a journalist also owes to her fiery presence in the daily prime-time show The Buck Stops Here on NDTV. The Washington Post recently added her to its Global Opinion section as a contributing columnist. She was awarded the International TV Personality of the Year in 2012 by The Association for International Broadcasting.

Garga Chatterjee too is a familiar name in Bangladesh for his numerous articles published in Dhaka Tribune. A columnist of the Huffington Post India, Garga has a PhD from Harvard University and is a faculty at the Indian Statis-

Naresh Fernandes

tical Institute, Kolkata. With over four thousand followers on twitter, Garga brings so much more to DLF than just an academic.

Based in Bombay, Naresh Fernandes is editor of Scroll.in, one of the biggest digital news sites in India. He was the editor-in-chief at Time Out India. His journalism career includes working experience at The Times of India, the Associated Press in Mumbai, and The Wall Street Journal in New York.

He has written a number of books including City Adrift: A Short Biography of Bombay (co-authored), and Taj Mahal Foxtrot: The Story of Bombay’s Jazz Age. He was also the co-editor, along with Jerry Pinto, of Bombay Meri Jaan (Penguin), an anthology of writing about Bombay.

Currently stationed in New Delhi as the South Asia bureau chief for the Economist, Max Rodenbeck wrote and reported from the Arab world for over 20 years. He was Middle East Bureau Chief of the Economist from 2000 to 2015.

Rodenbeck also writes book reviews that are frequently published in The New York Review of Books. His highly acclaimed biography of Cairo, Cairo: The City Victorious has been published in eight languages. l

Arab Spring and then what?

Nael Eltoukhy

Max Rodenback

n Arshae Ahmed The sixth edition of the Dhaka Lit Fest will have the most diverse set of speakers till date. Just imagine the cluster of speakers from Egypt, a country whose writers and language, Arabic, are usually left out in international festivals such as this. What else proves the point more aptly that the grand event treats non-white and non-European languages with equal worth.

Nael Eltoukhy, Max Rodenback and Marcia Lynx Qualey are the trio from the country. Though different in their literary pursuits, the most exciting aspect about their presence this year will definitely be the unfurling of the conundrum called the Arab Spring; conundrum because our access to it was mostly through the western media, which left us with many grey areas especially as to what happened in the aftermath of the revolution and what still is happening. The violent and non-violent revolutionary protest that spread throughout the countries of the Arab league, is not only a great demonstration of public protest against dictatorship, but also a big part of ongoing wars and historic changes. With three speakers who lived through such a monumental and historic event, we will surely get a realistic picture of the events leading towards the movement and then away from it.

Born in Kuwait, Nael Eltoukhy is a writer, journalist and translator, based

Marcia Lynx Qualey

in Cairo. His passion for both Hebrew and Arabic literatures is unique and unparalleled. He believes that Arabic is a language with huge literary potential, if seen from the perspective of its historical development and not how it is generally presented as the Quranic language. Besides translating Hebrew literary works by Israeli writers in his blog Thus Spoke Cohen, he has written four novels including his latest Women of Karantina which has garnered high accolades from critics and readers alike.

Marcia Lynx Qualey is the founder of ArabLit.org, a website that brings together translators, authors, publishers, critics, academics, and readers around discussions of Arabic literature in translation. She works as a book critic for The National, The Guardian, The Chicago Tribune, Qantara, BookWitty, and others. She has had the pleasure of working with the Library of Arabic Literature project (NYU Press), as a ghostwriter, editor, speaker, and literary advocate. She is currently at work on an academic project with Adam Talib, called Arabic for Others, a book on using Arabic children’s literature in the classroom with Ruth Ahmedzai Kemp.

Following university, where he studied history, Max Rodenbeck took up work as a reporter in the Middle East. In 2000 he joined the staff of The Economist as Middle East bureau chief and for the following 15 years covered the region from Iran to Morocco. For more on Rodenback, see the article below. l

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ARTS & LETTERS

Bangla literature & history

‘Culture is very important in translation’ n Rifat Munim

Before I conclude, I’d like to say something about translation. The act of translation should not go into bad hands; but language skills are not the ultimate mark of a good translation. The translator must know this culture and its distinct modes of expression, and how to render them in English.

The culture is very important in translation.

Born in 1939, Rizia Rahman is one of Bangladesh’s remarkable women writers writing in Bengali. Her novels include Ghar Bhanga Ghar, Uttar Purush, Rokter Akshar and Bong Theke Bangla. Aranyer Kachhe, Ekti Phuler Janya, Shilay Shilay Agun, Harun Phereni, and He Manab Manabi. She received the Bangla Academy Award in 1978. UPL published a collection of her short stories, Caged in Paradise and Other Stories in 2010. Bengal Lights is going to bring out a translation of her novel Rokter Akshar, to be launched in Dhaka Lit Fest 2016.

When I approached her for an interview, she agreed to answer the questions over the phone. Her tone told me she wouldn’t mince her words. Here’s what followed:

What are you reading now?

Whatever I get close at hand: novel, story, poetry, essay.

How are you feeling about attending the DLF 2016?

Writing anything at the moment?

I’m not writing at the moment.

Well, I don’t know. Are there going to be only those from the west?

Tell us about the writers who have influenced you the most?

Rabindranath and many of his contemporaries and successors have influenced me a lot. Then there was this Russian writer Nicolai Gogol whose short story “Overcoat” is still vivid in my memory. Tolstoy’s War and Peace is another piece of fiction which was a remarkable reading. I hold another book in high esteem and that is Edward Said’s Orientalism. But to tell you the truth, at this stage in my life I really can’t tell which author influenced me when or if any of them has had any sway over me at all. I think I am influenced only by myself these days.

Not at all. There will be writers from Egypt writing in both Arabic and English; there will be one from Uzbekistan, another from Thailand. And a whole lot of Bangladeshi writers writing both in Bangla and English.

Is that so? Well, that sounds interesting. You know what? It makes more sense to me to try to connect to cultures that have more in common with us than those somewhat foreign to us. Do you know how much of our culture has in common with Malaysia or Indonesia? Yet we literally know nothing about the literature of Malaysia. I once translated a famous Malaysian writer into Bengali.

How would you evaluate Bengali literature as a whole?

I think Bangla is a very rich language for literary expressions. Our writers have written quite a few novels which, whatever international standard you impose on them, are great works of fiction. Our achievements in short stories are even more glorious. But English translations of Bangla literature were few and far between. But now solid efforts are being put in the translation of Bangla literature. I hope this trend picks up speed.

There’s one Malaysian writer attending this year. His name is Eddin Khoo. He is a poet, writer, translator and Journalist.

That sounds like a different lit fest altogether.

Hope you don’t miss it.

Hmm, I won’t. l

Rethinking the Birangona n Maitreyi

Maitreyi is an occasional book reviewer.

The most illuminating part of Nayanika Mookherjee’s book is her ethnographic experience of living with survivors in Enayetpur

As someone who is neither an academic nor a researcher, the idea of normalisation of our patriarchal attitudes towards women both interests and horrifies me. And indeed it is sometimes heartening to hear voices of protest against age old structures which have sought to define and limit women, but also infuriating when every time there’s a report of any form of violence against women, the narrative of whether ‘she asked for it’ is invariably conjured. These structures and attitudes are tied up intricately with the history of the nation as well.

Growing up, I always felt pride in the fact that the victims of rape dur-

ing the Liberation War were accorded status as Birangonas (war heroines), that the post-liberation government had stepped in to rehabilitate them and give them national recognition. But for the Birangonas, the recognition itself came with a darker side. Nayanika Mookherjee’s ethnography of sexual violence during 1971 is a book which for me, in many ways, illuminated some of these ideological problems.

The book, The Spectral Wound: Sexual Violence, Public Memories, and the Bangladesh War of 1971 is vast in its scope. It traces the public memory of rape in 1971, and how that memory of war time rape has been invoked and changed in the years after independence. The title of the book itself is revealing; the celebration of the Birangona could only be kept alive when the individual experiences of the women were silenced, when the women disappeared into a homogenous whole. It is through this ‘spectre’ that the trauma is relived. In the meantime, the portrayal of those raped during 1971 was essentialised: the birangona became a figure defined by her shame, helplessness, dishevelled hair and vacant look. Their experiences were public secrets, known to all but not to be spoken of.

The most illuminating part of Nayanika Mookherjee’s book is her ethnographic experience of living with survivors in Enayetpur and their testimonies, stories and the ‘talkable history’ of the incidents. Contrary to the

14 ARTS & LETTERS

DHAKA TRIBUNE

SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 5, 2016

Performance art

Literature in its diverse forms

Prabda Yoon

Vuyelwa Maluleke

n Baizid Haque Joarder Different genres of literature have branched out in many different directions and this has never been truer before. In the postmodern age, literary and poetic talents push the boundaries of the grand naratives and strive to seek newer modes of communication with their audience. So they combine poetry with performance, or prose with visual art, to name just a few.

It has always been a strong aspect of the Dhaka Lit Fest that the organisers and the producers never lose sight of these most updated and innovative artists. This explains why talented artists like Vuyelwa Maluleke, Eddin Khoo and Prabda Yoon have found a prominent place in this year’s lineup.

Vuyelwa Maluleke is a Johannesburg-based spoken word artist, scriptwriter and actor who describes herself as a storyteller - archiving through her writing, influenced by her personal experience of her blackness and womanness - living in present day South Africa. With a BA in dramatic arts from the University of Witwatersrand, she came under the spotlight when she was shortlisted for the Brunel University African Poetry in 2014. Maluleke is also the author of a chapbook titled Things we Lost in the Fire and the slam champion of the Word and Sound 2015 Poetry league competition. Her writing serves as evidence that the black female body in South Africa is consistently being broken into in various spaces, that it can love and affirm itself is evidence of its ability to survive and want to survive.

Eddin Khoo is poet, writer, translator, journalist, teacher and independent art curator who has been widely published. He is also the founder of Pusaka,

Eddin Khoo

a leading cultural centre in the region which works to preserve and promote traditional and ritual arts in Malaysia, and Kala, a publishing house devoted to publishing literary translations of works from different languages into Malay, making them appeal to a bigger audience. A follower of Hinduism himself, Khoo studied Islamic thought and philosophy before co-authoring a book on traditional Malay woodcarving titled The Spirit of Wood (2003) and translating the works of Indonesian poet Goenawan Mohamad and Malaysian poet Latiff Mohidin into English. He is scheduled to publish his translation of Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass into Malay, sometime next year. Khoo is currently busy compiling and editing the complete writings of his father, Khoo Kay Kim, a famous Malaysian historian. He is also serving as the principal curator of the Southeast Asian cultural initiative and conversations series KataKatha.

Prabda Yoon is also one of those diverse individuals who wears many hats to be present at the Dhaka Lit Fest. A writer, translator, graphic designer, publisher and film-maker based in Bangkok, Yoon is considered by many to be the voice of Thai youth, who popularised post-modernist techniques and made them a mainstay in the stream of contemporary Thai literature. His story collection, Kwam Na Ja Pen (“Probability”), won the S.E.A. Write Award in 2002. Yoon is responsible for running the publishing house Typhoon Studio, co-founded the independent bookshop Bookmoby Reader’s Cafe and serves as the vice president of International Affairs in the Publishers and Booksellers Association of Thailand (PUBAT). He is also the current president of the Asia Pacific Publishers Association (APPA). l

Continued from Page 16 The Raincoat popular belief about the victims, these women had re-integrated into society, paying the price of silence. The villagers told the author that since the women had no agency in the incidence of rape, they should not be blamed for it. However, when in 1990 the women were brought to Dhaka to give visual evidence of the torture perpetrated on them, the villagers’ social sanctions began: by talking about the rape, the women were seen to be exploiting their shame. It is only through keeping silent about the trauma that these women could go back to their lives. As the author writes in an article in Himal: “The complexities through which these women have lived, given the violence of wartime rape and its innumerable renarrations, remain consigned to oblivion.”

The book explores a host of other issues, from the eroticised portrayal of rape during 71 in film or the imagery of a ruined woman in post 71 literature. Spectral Wound is a work of extensive research beyond the appropriating nationalist narrative on the experiences of those who were raped. It gives insights into the politics and social aspects that are intertwined in the narrative of the birangona, and seeks to “tell these narratives not as a horrific, ‘traumatic’ account, and instead communicate how people fold the violence of wartime rape into everyday social lives.”

Nayanika Mookherjee’s research is important as a testimonial, a guide, and as a recovery of the individual experiences of those raped in 1971. l

Mridha’s house. You come quickly. A colonel has already arrived. All professors have been told to come immediately.’

Ishaq walks out, leaving both the college and Nurul in the hands of the colonel and the military. He gets into a baby-taxi waiting on the road with its engine rumbling and roars off towards the home of the geography professor.

You could say Ishaq himself is like a military colonel these days. But perhaps the appearance of an actual colonel at the college this morning has demoted him to the rank of lieutenant colonel, maybe even lower; but it’s hard to push him below captain. From the onset of the military outbreak, everyone at the college has been wary of him. Since early April, he’s stopped speaking Bengali. One of his grandfather’s brother-in-law’s uncle or somebody was the valet de chambre of someone in Delhi. On those grounds, he now speaks Urdu day and night. The principal is a short, pudgy man. Having to try and speak to his flunkey in this new language makes his blood boil. ‘Ishaq Miah, there is much trouble in the country. Tell the professors and all to be careful. Tell them to not spread rumours. It is necessary to help the military people now.’

Ishaq nods—his small head a wet tip fitted on to a matchstick-thin body— and repeats thrice, ‘Zaroor! Zaroor! Zaroor!’ As this ‘zaroor’—uttered by Ishaq several days ago—rings in Nurul’s ears, reinvigorated by the rain, the word itself seems to explode with a boom. Has it started again, in this rain? No, no, that is just thunder. It seems to be getting worse. No, he must start off. Godspeed. l

15 DHAKA TRIBUNE

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ARTS & LETTERS

Bangla lit in translation

The Raincoat The Book of Dhaka, to be launched at DLF 2016, is going to be one of the most highlighted translations of Bengali fiction. Published jointly by Bengal Lights Books and Coma Press, UK, it has stories of Syed Manzoorul Islam, Wasi Ahmed, Anwara Syed Haq, Parvez Hossain and Shaheen Akhtar, among others.

Here we carry excerpts from the first story.

n Akhteruzzaman Elias

I

t’s been raining since dawn. Ah, the pitter-patter drizzling of the rain! God willing, it will go on for three days, since it’s Seven for Saturn and three for Mars, and day to day for the rest. That’s the general statement. There are specific classifications as well. For example: If it starts at dawn on Tuesday, for three days the clouds will stay. Or: If it rains on Wednesday morn, by afternoon the clouds are gone. Thursday, Friday, none have been left out—but just now, he’s forgotten. Whatever he does remember is enough to keep him curled up under the covers, catching a few more winks. At least there’ll be none of that rat-a-tat-tat for three days—surely the guns and ammo will rest a bit during the rain? Just a few days of worry-free relaxation.

But does that actually happen? One wonders… On this very excellent rainy morning, the loud banging on the door tears asunder late autumn’s wintry curtain. Ruins everything. Military! Military in his house! Oh God! Allahumma… anta subhanaka inni kuntu minazzhalimin. Reciting the prayer, Nurul Huda goes towards the door. He’s memorised so many prayers over these last few months, the five kalmas1 ready on his lips every time he leaves the house—who knows when or where the military will show up—still, something always goes wrong: the prayer seems correct, but he’s forgotten to put on his cap.

As soon as he opens the door—unfastening two latches and the deadbolt, and lifting the wooden bar—the principal’s assistant, Ishaq, walks in, accompanied by a blast of wind and rain. Praise Allah! Not military! He wants to grab the man

and kiss him! But Ishaq, in his thin voice, says gravely, ‘Sir sends his salams.’

Then he sucks the soft breath of his words into the stubble on his hollow cheeks and lets out a command: ‘You’ve been summoned. You must go now!’

‘What’s happened?’

‘There’s no time to discuss details—someone set off an explosion next to the college wall last night.’

‘Meaning?’

‘Some miscreants destroyed the electric transformer. Then, on their way out, they threw a grenade at the principal’s house, destroyed the gate.’

What a terrifying situation! The transformer is next to the front wall of the college. Beyond the wall, there is a garden, then a tennis lawn. The college building comes after. Past that huge structure are the football and cricket fields. Beyond the fields, to the left, is the principal’s residence. The military camp lies alongside—the college gym is now the camp. Setting off a bomb at the principal’s gate is like attacking the military camp. How did they get so far in, after setting off an explosion at the front wall, he wants to know. ‘How?’ How would the messenger know? ‘You tell me.’

‘Meaning?’ How would he know? Did the messenger think he was one of the miscreants? His head drops involuntarily and the words roll out of his mouth like water, ‘Ishaq Miah, have a seat. Have some tea. I’ll only need five or six minutes.’

‘No.’ Refusing the hospitality, Ishaq says, ‘I need to go to Abdus Sattar  See Page 15

Translation through the years n Saquib Sarker

Dhaka Lit Fest, no doubt, was conceived of with the increasing need for articulation felt by the country’s English writers, thus becoming the strongest platform for showcasing their works. It has also given, one is apt to observe, a solid boost to the steady growth of the body of Bengali fiction translated into English. Since the very beginning in 2011, translated work of Bengali fiction has found a prominent place every year in its elaborate arrangement.

University Press Limited, Bangla Academy and Bengal Lights, the last being a comparatively recent initiative, are known for bringing out quality translations of Bangla literature.

The DLF has become the yearly platform either for launching or featuring their new translations, attracting a crowd composed of readers as well as publishers of international renown.

One of the main attractions on this front this year is An Ocean of Sorrow, an English translation of Mir Mosharraf Hossain’s Bishad Sindhu, which will be featured in one of the panels on translation.

Last year UPL published a translated collection of Nasreen Jahan’s short stories, A Temporary Sojourn and Other Stories. This year they are set to launch

several works of fiction but no translation.

Bengal Lights will hit the festival with four new books of translation. Under the Library of Bangladesh series it will launch two translated novels: Rizia Rahman’s Rokter Akshar, and Moinul Ahsan Saber’s The Mercenary; a collection of poems by selected Bangladeshi poets in Khademul Islam’s translation, On My birthday and Other Poems in Translation; and The Book of Dhaka, a collection of short stories by selected Bangladeshi prose writes.

Edited by Arunava Sinha and QP Alam, The Book of Dhaka will be co-published with Coma Press, UK -an instance of healthy collaboration in publication.

Dhaka translation Centre, a wing of BL, has also published two English collections of short stories by Hasan Azizul Haque: Three Stories and Twelve Short Stories; a translation of Syed Shamsul Haque’s Neel Dangshan (Blue Venom), and a compilation of translated stories by selected Bangladeshi prose writers.

This is by no means an adequate look at the body of Bangla fiction in translation and is confined to a few past years. But even this cursory look suffices to show the growth is steady and the future is bleak no more.

No doubt the DLF has been integral to this steady growth. l

16 ARTS & LETTERS

DHAKA TRIBUNE

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