River Madhumati And The Broken Fiddle

The use of dark humour and gritty descriptions make each story accessible to a wide range of readers and will help them to imagine some of the harshness of life in poverty in Bangladesh. Anyone who has undergone similar difficulties would also find these stories relatable and should therefore enjoy reading them. ‘A man can never run away from his past, even if it happened before his birth,’ Sharif Atiquzzaman thinks, as the aftermath of the partition of India haunts him, afflicting great pain. He is from Bangladesh which was a part of India before 1947, the year of partition, and of Pakistan more than twenty-four years since then. It emerged as an independent country through a bloody war in 1971. This collection of short stories examines the challenges and opportunities for those living in Bangladesh from different social, economic, political or religious backgrounds. The gritty stories are equally humorous and eye-opening, and Sharif maintains consistent themes and tones across them to present a bigger picture to the reader. Born in 1965 in Narail, a small town in Bangladesh, Sharif Atiquzzaman has been writing for almost three decades in his mother tongue, Bengali. Twenty-three books are credited to his name and this is his first approach to global readers. He lives in Bangladesh and teaches as a Professor of English literature in a post-graduate college.