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Description
In Dusk in the Frog Pond, Rummana Chowdhury presents new narratives about the lived realities of Muslim women as they navigate life, be it in Bangladesh, on the shores of Lake Ontario in Toronto or along the riotous waves of the Atlantic in New York. These eight powerful stories follow a series of intrepid Bangladeshi women as they confront the issues of migration, displacement, nostalgia, cultural assimilation, marriage andabove allidentity and loneliness. Despite the challenges facing them, these compelling characters seek out happiness, whether in arranged marriages, romantic relationships or in shaping their individual destinies. Each tale is a depiction of the tensions, active as well as simmering, between culture, tradition and history and the modern world. The collection is a compendium of both joy and sorrow, never forgetting the eternally burning fire of hope that lives and dies within all of us.
Contributor Notes
Rummana Chowdhury is the author of forty-three books, in both Bengali and English, which include poetry, short stories, novels, and essays. She is a leading global commentator on issues of migration that pertain to the South Asian Diaspora. She has received several notable awards including Woman of the Year, 2010, Canada, and Best Writer and Translator for Diaspora Literature, Ontario Bengali Cultural Society, 2016. She has also received several awards for her contributions to Bengali, English and Diasporic literature and translation work, including, most recently, the Kobi Jasim Uddin Award, 2019, and the Bangladesh Lekhika Shongho Award for Literature and Translation, 2017. She immigrated to Canada in 1982 and for the past thirty years has worked as an accredited interpreter/ translator. She lives in Mississauga, Ontario. Dusk in the Frog Pond and Other Stories is her new collection of short stories.
Editorial Reviews
"Rummana Chowdhury has carefully crafted the short stories in this book. The emotions of women, the Liberation War of Bangladesh, the dilemma of diaspora and many other sentiments have been expressed with her lucid pen. Really worth reading!"
—Nashid Kamal, academic, author, singer
"Dusk in the Frog Pond and Other Stories makes a thoughtful contribution to the growing literary collective of immigrant women’s experiences, as well as adding a new facet to the substantial creative output of Rummana Chowdhury. These provocative stories follow Bangladeshi women as they navigate their roles and responsibilities as wives and mothers, through cultural displacement, psychological trauma and more, as they seek personal fulfilment and some control over their own destinies."
—Kathleen M. O’Connell, author of Rabindranath Tagore: The Poet as Educator
"Fiction rich in ideas and ambience for one who loves journeying into a literary landscape on a quiet weekend. Rummana Chowdhury gives us one more treasure of stories rooted in heritage. Unputdownable, in simple terms."
—Syed Badrul Ahsan, independent journalist and historian
