Once More into the Past (Daily Star Books, 2020)
This was a bad year in so many ways but it was a good year to catch up on reading. One book which bowled me over and which I realise I should have read a long time back is Akhteruzzaman Elias s masterpiece,
Khowabnama (Mawla Brothers, 1996). I believe it s being translated now; if it finds a good international publisher it will surely be on the shelves with the greatest novels of the last century and place Elias on the shelves with Hardy and Faulkner as a literary chronicler who made a whole region come alive at a certain moment of history. Another novel that overwhelmed me in the Covid-19 year but had been gathering dust in my shelves earlier is Jose Saramagao s