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"A story full of gravity and urgency." -Ha Jin, author of A Song Everlasting
A love story unravels in the tumultuous years leading up to the war for Bangladeshi Independence, revealing the irreconcilable fissures of land and life.
A city is hellbent on revolution. Passionate and impetuous, Shelley Majumder is a university student at a time of political discord in Dhaka in the late 1960s. Frustrated by the oppression of West Pakistani rulers, the Bengali people are rising up, taking Shelley with them. As he is forced to navigate the chaos of an uprising, where his every choice and action weighs heavy with consequence, Shelley's life is thrown further into disarray when he elopes with his childhood sweetheart, Roxana, a Muslim girl from his village, sparking a chain of events reflecting the turbulent relationship between Hindus and Muslims that quickly spins out of control.
At its very core a story of love and loss, Bengal Hound traces the turbulent years of East Pakistan that led to a mass revolution, eventually culminating in the creation of Bangladesh. Rahad Abir conjures up characters haunted by memory and trauma in a society reeling from the pains of the Partition of British India. A powerful exploration of the dynamics of nationalism, family, religion, and gender relations, Bengal Hound reveals how the fracturing and making of countries leave indelible marks on its people.
Rahad Abir is a writer from Bangladesh. His work has appeared in Prairie Schooner, Witness, The Los Angeles Review, Himal Southasian, Courrier International, The Wire, and elsewhere. He has an MFA in fiction from Boston University. He is the recipient of the Charles Pick Fellowship at the University of East Anglia and the Marguerite McGlinn Prize for Fiction. His work has been translated into French and Hindi. Currently he is working on a short story collection, which was a finalist for the 2021 Miami Book Fair Emerging Writer Fellowship. He lives in Georgia, USA.