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Afghanistan, the name brings images of war-inflicted, Bin Laden’s hiding heaven, America’s war on terror-labeled BBC or CNN documentary or news dispatches. Unless of course one reads Khaled Husseini’s A Thousand Splendid Suns. The book puts colour to the black and gray picture of the war-demolished country drawn by the world media. He dedicates the book to Haris and Farah and to the women of Afghanistan. Even though the country has been in war for almost three decades and around eight million refugees spread all over the world have been away from their motherland, Husseini draws the picture of new beginning for the country. The novel begins with Nana calling her daughter harami, a word the daughter was not familiar with. It was only years later she could relate the word with her husband’s co-wife who had an illegitimate child. Marium was in her late 30s when her around-50 husband married a young girl of fifteen who was the only survivor of the neighboring family. As Laila’s house, alon

Syed Shamsul Haq is unquestionably a pre-eminent intellectual personality in Bangladesh. He is a writer, playwright, poet and critic all rolled into one. He has won numerous awards for his writing at home and abroad, including the Bangla Academy Award and Ekushe Padak, two of the most prestigious accolades in Bangladesh. His writing career has earned him the honorific “ambidextrous writer”, meaning someone who can work with both his hands. Haq has been one of the most prolific writers of recent times in the field of literature for more than fifty years now. A number of his plays and novels have been translated in many different languages.The Blue Sting is a novella by Syed Shamsul Haq and translated by Kabir Chowdhury, a scholar of repute and translator. The slim book has a heavy message to convey. It is about a man named Kazi Nazrul Islam, a name that gets the Pakistani army into believing that the owner of the name is the famous Bengali poet Kazi Nazrul Islam. The whole novella is a

Selina Hossain has been awarded the 'Ekushe Padak' this year. She has been writing for more than four decades. One of the leading female writers in Bangladesh, Hossain was born on June 14, 1947 in Rajshahi. She started writing in the 60s and her first book, a collection of short stories, came out in 1969. She has written more than 60 books so far. Japito Jibon, one of her books, is taught at Rabindra Biswa Bharati University and another book named Nirontor Ghontadhoni is being taught at Jadhovpur University. Many of her works have been translated into different languages. JACKIE KABIR talks to her about her life and works. Q.How long have you been writing? Ans:I have been writing from 1964. So it has been forty years. Q.Did you start writing fiction from the beginning? Ans:I wrote poems first. When we were young, we used to live in Rajshahi because of my father's job. I used to fill the dairies up with poems. Some of which were published in different magazines in Dhaka. But