The Agony of the Ghost

Hasan Azizul Huq is known for his stories that bring a powerful social consciousness to bear on the lives of ordinary people in contemporary Bangladesh—but doing so with surprising twists to what we think of as the typical grounds of realistic fiction. The Agony of the Ghost gathers twelve remarkable stories from his large oeuvre that offer a sense of the range of his insights and approaches. In ‘Without Name or Lineage’, a man returns home in search of his wife and son after the war, only to find them in ways both unexpected and expected. Another story finds a sorcerer dying without revealing his secrets to three brothers who had been trying to compel him to tell—and strange deaths follow. In ‘Throughout the Afternoon’, a disarmingly simple story, a young boy awaits his grandfather’s death. In all the stories, the lives of the most disadvantaged people in Bengali society are revealed in harrowing, unforgettable detail.

‘In Hasan Azizul Huq’s stories we find an effort to break down the reality of oppression.’—Rashid Karin, Contemporary Bengali Writing