Novel
Surya Dighal Bari
সূর্য-দীঘল বাড়ী
Abu Ishaque · 1955
Synopsis
In the aftermath of the famine of 1943, Jaigun, repudiated by her husband, returns to the village with her children and settles on a meagre plot that rumour says is cursed and haunted by djinns. She works outside the home to feed them, which the notables and the men of religion regard as a breach of purdah; and when her daughter Maimun is to be married, she is required to stop going out to work.
Context
Completed in August 1948, the novel waited seven years for a publisher and appeared in 1955 in Calcutta, from Chirayat Prakashan. It starts from the famine of 1943 and from the practice of talaq, by which wives were repudiated during the famine, and runs through the riots of 1946 and the partition of 1947. The dialogues keep the villagers' sayings and riddles, which Abdus Selim rendered in his English translation, published more than sixty years after the original.
Who it is for
A short novel, one hundred and forty-two pages in the original edition, whose dialogues are written in the speech of the villages.
Prizes and reception
A classic of the Bangladeshi novel, it gave rise in 1979 to a film by Sheikh Niamat Ali and Masihuddin Shaker, counted among the best of the country's cinema.