Saad Z. Hossain

Until the growth of English-language schools post-independence and US education, there was very little English writing from East Pakistan/Bangladesh. The 1990s saw the emergence of a generation of new writers, writing from both home and abroad in English and in different genres. Saad Z. Hossain, born on 22 April 1979 in Dhaka and raised there, studied in an English medium school, before going to the University of Virginia to study Business and English Literature. He is arguably one of the most talented and productive of this new generation of writers. Hossain writes in a hybrid genre within speculative fiction, blending tropes and elements of both science fiction and fantasy, spicing it further with wry irony, black humour, and reimagined Islamic mythology – a fusion that he describes as “[softer] science fiction with magic realism” (Myman). He has authored four novels, one novella, and several short stories in about ten years and is presently working on his fifth novel, which he expects to bring out by the end of 2023. He also writes columns for local newspapers such as The Daily Star and Dhaka Tribune.