Novel · A way to begin
Tree Without Roots
লালসালু
Syed Waliullah · 1948
Synopsis
Mahabbatnagar is a Bengali village where life is hard. A clever man, Majid, arrives there, finds an old forgotten tomb, covers it with a red cloth and proclaims that it is the tomb of a saint whose shrine he has come to guard. The villagers, whom he judges easy to deceive through superstition, bring their offerings; Majid settles in, resolves everyone's difficulties in his own way and gradually extends his authority over the village.
Context
The author often passed, at Mymensingh where his father was posted, a shrine covered with a red cloth, and the novel was born from it. It appeared in 1948 from Comrade. Anne-Marie Thibaud, his wife, translated it into French from an English version by the author; the English translation published in London in 1967, Tree Without Roots, takes up the French title. The book has also appeared in Urdu, Czech and German, and Tanvir Mokammel brought it to the screen in 2001.
Who it is for
A short novel, of about one hundred and ten pages in the Bengali edition; it is worth knowing what a mazar is, a saint's tomb venerated in the countryside.
Prizes and reception
A classic of modern Bengali literature, it won its author the Bangla Academy prize in 1961 and is on the school syllabuses of Bangladesh.