Novel
অনেক সূর্যের আশা
Not translated into English
Sarder Jayenuddin · 1966
Synopsis
A broad fresco of Bengal, from the Second World War to the movement for autonomy: war and famine, riots between communities, the moral decline of some, the material hardship of others, everyone's struggles to live, and, amid all this, the hopes raised by the coming partition, in the decades of anxiety and tension that lead to it.
Context
The novel appeared in 1966. Banglapedia says it is devoted to the hopes that accompanied the partition, and ranks it among the novels that have realistically portrayed the politics of East Pakistan and the national movements, alongside Samsaptak by Shahidullah Kaiser and Arek Falgun by Zahir Raihan; The Statesman places it, with Ksudha O Asha by Alauddin Al-Azad, among two Marxist-inspired novels. It is still being reissued in Dhaka, notably by Bijoy Prokash in 2015.
Who it is for
A novel of two hundred and eighty pages in the 2015 edition; it assumes familiarity with the Bengal famine and the partition of 1947.
Prizes and reception
It earned its author the Bangla Academy prize in 1967 and is regarded as his best novel.