![]() ![]() The War of Liberation, the Fall of Dhaka and the creation of Bangladesh in 1971 form an integral part of the novella. This makes for a more intense reading experience, but one that necessitates a close reading. Life and Political Reality (originally written in 1988 as Jeebon o Rajnaitil Bastobabata) does not follow a typical narrative arc with a clearly defined beginning, middle and end. Yet, so distinct was his style and so unique his language that shortly after his untimely death, caused by a massive heart attack, he acquired a near-cult status, with his kind of writing being known by the moniker “Shahidul Zahiriya”.Īlso read: A Disturbing Account of the 1970 East Pakistan Storm and Its Political Fallout ![]() Real incidents, too, are viewed through multiple lenses and common, everyday images and ideas run like a leitmotif through the narrative: it could be sarus cranes or a guava tree, the broken strap of a sponge sandal or crows flying in a mohalla sky.īorn Mohammad Shaheedul Haque (1953-2008), Zahir was a career bureaucrat in the Bangladesh civil services who has left behind a slim oeuvre comprising four novels and three collections of short stories. In both, real places appear like magical lands replete with magical occurrences and strange characters. But, like Khwabnama, here too the past refuses to stay in its place it keeps popping up, unsettling the present and casting a dark shadow on the future. They are short, pithy, compact to the point of brevity. ![]() Shahidul Zahir’s two novellas in Life and Political Reality have none of the scope and grandeur of Elias’s magnum opus. Khwabnama rises above other similar socio-political novels because of Elias’s ability to seamlessly and effortlessly weave together many strands – some real, some imagined, some political, some mythical – all fore-grounded against an unnamed village somewhere in northern undivided Bengal. Located against the backdrop of the Tehbhaga movement that swept across undivided Bengal in the years leading up to independence and the creation of East Pakistan, dreams and memory, legend and history, past and present, politics and spiritualism come together to create a richly nuanced tapestry. Elias’s richly textured prose ripples like shot silk, with sudden shafts of brilliant imagery and elements from the past appearing and reappearing in the form of dreams and memories. I had the occasion to read Akhteruzzaman Elias’s seminal novel, Khwabnama, recently in Arunava Sinha’s excellent English translation. A bit like a fairy tale, the boundary between fact and fiction, fantasy and reality, blur, bringing a whimsical, quirky quality to the mundane and ordinary. While firmly grounded in reality, fantastic elements appear as though they too are equally real and therefore normal. However, we may receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.Magic realism has had a substantial presence in Bengali literature in the works of writers such as Nabarun Bhattacharya, Akhteruzzaman Elias, Shahidul Zahir, Jibanananda Das and Syed Waliullah. We only include products that have been independently selected by Bustle's editorial team. Whether your copies of The House of the Spirits and One-Hundred Years of Solitude are well-worn, or you’re just now learning about the works of Isabel Allende and Gabriel García Márquez, the books on the list below will serve you well.īelow, 20 magical realist books to read now. The magical realist style originated in Latin America, but can also be found in the works of writers from Africa, Japan, the Indian subcontinent, and elsewhere.ĭon’t worry if all of that sounds a little confusing. These surreal features - which include everything from the yellow butterflies that announce Mauricio Babilonia’s arrival in One Hundred Years of Solitude to Abuela’s candle in Encanto - go unexplained. In the simplest terms, magical realism is a style of worldbuilding in which fantastical elements are visibly present in, and inextricable from, everyday life. Remember when you were a kid, and it seemed like any doorway or hollowed-out tree could take you to Narnia or FernGully? Magical realist books recapture that feeling, offering a portal to a world where mysticism seeps into everyday life.
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