A review of: Sohana Manzoor. Our Many Longings: Contemporary Short Fiction from Bangladesh. Odisha, India: Dhauli Books, 2021. xv+234 pp. ISBN: 978-81-9545604-8.

Our Many Longings is a collection of nineteen Bangladeshi short stories by writers emerging and established, living at home or abroad and using English or Bangla as their creative medium. Bangladesh is a relatively new country, having found its independence only in 1971, after a protracted colonial rule, first by the British and then by Pakistanis, and this book aspires to celebrate its vibrant, variegated life and culture on the occasion of its fiftieth anniversary as a sovereign nation: its joys and sorrows; lights, shadows and colours of everyday life; its push and pull between modernity and tradition; its class, gender and inter-religious struggles and, above all, its terrifying but glorious history associated with the War of Liberation, in which, by some estimates, about three million people died at the hands of the brutal Pakistani forces, and about two hundred thousand women were subjected to sexual assault. The book allows us to vicariously experience the country’s social-political-cultural history as well as its living soul; and the loss and longings of those who have left the home soil to build a “nest” elsewhere. We feel the pulse of the country or its immigrant communities as we turn the pages of the book...