Kazi Nazrul Islam is our National Poet, but, in addition to writing poetry and composing songs, he also wrote fiction. In fact, Nazrul’s first publication was not poetry, but the short story “Baundeler Atmakahini” (The Autobiography of a Vagabond), published in Saogat in May 1919.
Roquiah Sakhawat Hossein was born in 1880, Kazi Nazrul Islam in 1899. Apart from their difference in gender, there could not have been more differences in the circumstances of their class and upbringing.
One late December night in 1921, Kazi Nazrul Islam wrote what would be his most iconoclastic poem, the poem that would give rise to his soubriquet, “Bidrohi Kabi,” the Rebel Poet. Inspired by a complex of emotions, Nazrul’s ideas were flowing too fast for his pen to keep pace.
Tree Without Roots, Syed Waliullah s translation or transcreation of his novel,
Lal Salu.
Chander Amabasya, and
Cry, River, Cry, Osman Jamal s translation of
Kando Nadi Kando, followed. It has also published single writer anthologies of poetry and short stories. In 2011, it published a Bangladeshi edition of Mirza Ihtesamuddin s
The Wonders of Vilayet, translated by Kaiser Haq.
Considering the importance of translation, the University of Liberal Arts Bangladesh (ULAB) launched the Dhaka Translation Center (DTC) in 2013 with the translation of three short stories by Hasan Azizul Huq. It organised workshops, and Bengal Lights Books (BLB), a sister concern, co-published a collection of stories emerging from those workshops: