The World in My Hands

K. Anis Ahmed

Even a few decades ago, the number of Bangladeshi writers writing in English who could get their work published were very few. Recently there has been a significant upward trend of such writers, some of them getting recognition outside their motherland.  
After the time of Syed Waliullah and Sayeed Ahmed, now a new generation of English-language prose writers like Tahmima Anam, K. Anis Ahmed, Maria Chaudhuri, Sharbari Ahmed, Mahmud Rahman, Farah Ghuznavi,  Khademul Islam have emerged.
The World in My Hands, an English Novel by Bangladeshi writer, K. Anis Ahmed can surely be counted as another step forward in taking Bengali writers to the world literature. Released in South Asia (and worldwide as e-book) by publishing giant Random House's Asian subsidiary, the book has already garnered quite a lot of attention. “A friend of mine in Calcutta just sent me a photo of my book in one of the Calcutta stores and I also learnt that it had been invited in the Jaipur Literary festival for a couple of sessions,” the author of the novel excitedly says at the book launch event.
“Politics is not used as a backdrop of the novel, rather it lies in the centre piece of this literary work,” comments Mahtab Haider, a prominent journalist who is currently working for the UN. Using a very satirical tone, The World in My Hands deals with two friends, Hissam, a struggling newspaper editor (who is the anti-hero of the novel) and Kaiser, the city's wealthiest property developer. The novel progresses with the changing relationship between these two as they find themselves standing on two opposite poles of a crisis that disrupts their country's social order.
Award winning Bangladeshi writer Tahmima Anam, author of The Good Muslim, describes the book as “darkly funny”, foreshadowing Ahmed as a strong new voice in English writing from Bangladesh. Celebrated Indian politician and author Shashi Tharoor describes the novel as a poignant and insightful page-turner. In Bangladesh, Bengal Lights books is distributing the book, and it can be found in major bookstores around Dhaka , including  Bookworm, Omni Books and Boi Bichitra, as well as other outlets such as  Jatra, Aranya and Red Shift Coffee Lounge.
The book was launched on December 27, 2013 at the Red Shift Coffee Lounge, Dhaka. The launching was followed by a lively conversation between Ahmed and Mahtab Haider that addressed different issues like the need of cross-cultural literary exchange through translating each other's literature and also the dearth of Bangladeshi writers who write in English.

The conversation reinforced the fact that we, the readers, need to consider literature as an extensive social institution which incorporates history, anthropology, politics, and economics of a society. Literature can be a means which could possibly bridge the gap between different cultures and reach a universal culture. Translating our literary pieces into other languages can be one way to popularize our work among the book buffs around the world. At the same time, Ahmed mentioned the need for translating books from other languages into Bengali as well, as it will help Bangladeshi readers go beyond the border.
“We do need to do translations and I am involved with this new initiative called Dhaka Translation Centre headed by Kaiser Haq who is one of the leading contemporary poets writing in English”, he opines. “We intend to translate 2 to 4 more books next year.”
“I think this cross-cultural exchange is one of the few things we have lost during the last two decades,” he argues. Drawing a comparison between the scene of world literature and Bangladeshi literature, he comments that we have neither adequate state funding nor a supportive private sector that could give extensive patronage to the arts.
In his conversation, Ahmed reiterated the fact that we need to improve our reading habit and build up a whole new generation of readers. He believes both the writers and readers need to do their respective part to do so.
“The greatest gift that Tagore has left to us is the modernization of language,” Ahmed says. “He brought it very close to mukher bhasha especially if you see his final poems. Why are we, the writers not doing something close to that now where people could recognize themselves in the narratives?” he questions. At the same time, he recounted the importance of brushing our reading habit more and more, especially by incorporating more novels into our educational curriculum.
Anis Ahmed is one of those few English writers in Bangladesh who completed his 12 years of education in Bengali. He later completed his higher education from Brown University, Washington University and New York University before returning to Bangladesh in 2004.
“I am equally comfortable in both Bengali and English”, Ahmed comments. “In fact I have written quite a few non-fiction pieces in Bengali. However, when it comes to writing fiction I find it much easier to write in English.”
Ahmed has been writing for the past 20 years. His first book of short stories, Good Night, Mr. Kissinger, was published in November 2012. His first published story, "Forty Steps," appeared in the Minnesota Review (Spring 2000), alongside pieces by Carlos Fuentes and William Gass, and was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. It was translated into Bengali as "Chollish Kadam" by Manabendra Bandyopadhyay in 2006.He is also a co-founder of Bengal Lights, Bangladesh's most prominent new English literary journal.