Stories that Travel Continents

Neeman Sobhan, columnist and writer, has always had a knack for telling a story.

She started writing her column 'Ruminations from Rome' since 1991, later shifting to the Star magazine with 'A Roman Column'. While writing on Italy, a country where she has lived for decades she has also delved into writing short stories now and then. This year at the Hay Festival, Dhaka, Bengal Publications will be launching  Neeman's collection of short stories 'Piazza Bangladesh'.   

The stories are about Bangladeshi expatriates in Italy – both the struggling immigrants of Rome's back streets as well as those who live in the 'refined, tinted villas in pine shaded suburbs'. They also take nostalgic journeys that travel continents reaching the Dhaka of the past, West Pakistan in the 60s, to Jaipur and Delhi coming back to the lives of present day American Bengalis. This is her debut anthology after her book 'An Abiding City': Ruminations from Rome published by UPL which is based on her column in The Daily Star.

Neeman Sobhan

According to the present book blurb: “Some of the stories are linked, and the intertwined lives move not only across continents but lifetimes filled with love, loss, envy, regrets, unrequited longings, lost innocence, thwarted ambitions, misunderstandings, reconciliations, and ultimately, spiritual acceptance.”

“I think I've been engaged in the creation of fiction, at least mentally, long before I even knew what 'fiction' or 'writing' meant,” says Neeman. “I have been telling myself stories from the moment I learnt to read, reimagining my first story-books and inventing extensions to them.” She began writing short stories as a high school student, her first story being published in the college magazine of Quetta Women's College in the Baluchustan of pre-Pakistan days.

“This boosted my confidence, but for a while I lost my way in the world of poetry, still my favourite means of self-expression, though a private one.” She later stumbled into column writing and the response among readers gave her the confidence in her voice as a narrator. She also took writing courses and workshops including a Guardian Master class.

Her next project is to finish her first novel, “The Ninety-Nine Names for Being” a work in progress that she started a few years ago. “The novel is a family saga” Neeman elaborates “about the evolution of Bangladesh from pre-partition India to the present times, seen through the eyes of two characters belonging to different generations and historical eras.”
– A M A