Bangladesh in Anglophone and Vernacular Literature

"Bangladesh has been criminally underrepresented not just on the academic scene but also in mainstream discourse. Asif Iqbal’s powerful, confident book delivers a major blow in this battle. It ranges widely – taking up major authors like Salman Rushdie, Amitav Ghosh and Kamila Shamsie, but also bringing in lesser-known authors from the periphery such as Dilruba Z. Ara and Syed Manzurul Islam – to examine in expert detail the many manifestations and mutations this extraordinary country has gone through since its violent, traumatic birth."

- Ian Almond, Professor of World Literature at Georgetown University, Qatar

"Iqbal offers a compelling analysis of how Bengali- and English-language literature have imagined the lands and people of South Asia and, specifically, what is today Bangladesh (and its previous incarnations as East Bengal and East Pakistan). His thoughtful examination of a series of carefully juxtaposed works of fiction and non-fiction from across South Asia and its diasporas reveals the consistent contestations of official narratives about nations, nationalisms, and identities. By centering Bangladesh-focused literary production, this book challenges our understanding not only of literary postcolonial studies, but also South Asian—and indeed, world—history and literature more generally."

- Elora Shehabuddin, Professor of Gender & Women's Studies and Global Studies, University of California, Berkeley, Author of Sisters in the Mirror: A History of Muslim Women and the Global Politics of Feminism

"Bangladesh in Anglophone and Vernacular Literature is a thoughtful and ambitious investigation into literary representations of critical events since the decolonization and partition of Bengal in 1947. Iqbal examines a wide range of novels from subcontinental South Asia and its diasporas addressing the 1947-founding of Pakistan, East Pakistan’s liberation struggle in 1971 leading to the emergence of Bangladesh as a sovereign nation, and the decades afterwards. Attending to both English and Bengali writings, this study breaks with the typical practice of studying these literatures in isolation. Resituating Bangladesh as a site of postcolonial inquiry, this literary-critical study is an important contribution to the field of comparative literature."

- Debali Mookerjea-Leonard, author of Literature, Gender, and the Trauma of Partition: The Paradox of Independence

"Rarely did anticolonial, national-liberation movements have a more utopian horizon than Bangladesh in 1971: namely, language and its relation to self-determination. Asif Iqbal has produced a trailblazing literary-cultural account of the Liberation War, leading to the creation of Bangladesh from East Pakistan. This is an enduring story of the resistance of intellectuals, students, women, and ordinary folk in the midst of war, occupation, and genocide. Iqbal explores the vital contribution of Leftist authors in reshaping literary culture in South Asia in the post-1947 era, recovering a hitherto-neglected archive of Bangla writing in East Pakistan/Bangladesh. Centering the "many histories" of the Liberation War, the book converses with recent world literature debates in the metropolitan academy, as well as the relation between vernacular and Anglophone writing across Bangladesh, India, and Pakistan. An illuminating book, touching on issues that continue to be relevant today.”

- Auritro Majumder, author of Insurgent Imaginations: World Literature and the Periphery