In the quest to read Bangladeshi authors, I found many authors have been born and raised in Bangladesh and then moved abroad. Many authors come back to visit and show up at Bookworm Bookshop, a local bookshop, to sign books and do an author talk. My students at International School Dhaka love these stories as well because some authors challenge societal norms, bring up Bangladesh’s cultural past, or become role models to aspiring writers.

Author: Abeer Y. Hoque,

Grew up in Nigeria and USA

Website: https://www.olivewitch.com/

Olive Witch: a memoir, Published by HarperCollins, ISBN 978-9351777007, Date: 2016.

In the 1970s, Nigeria is flush with oil money, building new universities, and hanging on to old colonial habits. Abeer Hoque is a Bangladeshi girl growing up in a small sunlit town, where the red clay earth, corporal punishment and running games are facts of life. At thirteen she moves with her family to suburban Pittsburgh and finds herself surrounded by clouded skies and high schoolers who speak in movie quotes and pop culture slang. Finding her place as a young woman in America proves more difficult than she can imagine. Disassociated from her parents, and laid low by academic pressure and spiralling depression, she is committed to a psychiatric ward in Philadelphia. When she moves to Bangladesh on her own, it proves to be yet another beginning for someone who is only just getting used to being an outsider – wherever she is.

The Lovers & the Leavers, Published by Bengal Lights Books, ISBN 978-9351772095, Date: 2014.

In twelve linked stories, the characters in The Lovers and the Leavers intersect and drift apart across several years and continents. Komola, a maid in a quiet mansion in Dhaka, begins a doomed relationship with a handsome, mysterious man. Her nephew, a gifted little boy in her village, nurses a terrible secret, and his mother flees, ending up by the sea in Chennai. At the other end of the world, a Bangladeshi-American woman, Rox, lusts after a teenager, while her best friend, the rebellious Ila, must choose between love and tradition. Artfully woven with poems and photographs, these stories move between India, Bangladesh, America and Europe. 

Author: Adiba Jaigirdar

Born in Dhaka, lives in Ireland

Website: https://adibajaigirdar.com/

She has written up to six books so far. Her website has a wonderful feature of Bengali books. This is a great place to find more books by Bangladeshi authors.

Henna Wars, Published by Page Street YA, ISBN: 978-1645675730, Date: 2022

When Nishat comes out to her parents, they say she can be anyone she wants—as long as she isn’t herself. Because Muslim girls aren’t lesbians. Nishat doesn’t want to hide who she is, but she also doesn’t want to lose her relationship with her family. And her life only gets harder once a childhood friend walks back into her life.

Hani and Ishu’s Guide to Fake Dating, Published by Page Street YA, ISBN: 978-1645672579, Date: 2021

Everyone likes Humaira “Hani” Khan—she’s easy going and one of the most popular girls at school. But when she comes out to her friends as bisexual, they invalidate her identity, saying she can’t be bi if she’s only dated guys. Panicked, Hani blurts out that she’s in a relationship…with a girl her friends absolutely hate—Ishita “Ishu” Dey. Ishu is the complete opposite of Hani. She’s an academic overachiever who hopes that becoming head girl will set her on the right track for college. But Ishita agrees to help Hani, if Hani will help her become more popular so that she stands a chance of being elected head girl.

See her website for more current publications.

Author: Iffat Nawaz

Born in Dhaka, lives in India

Shurjo’s Clan, Published by Vintage Books, ISBN: 9780670096985, Date: 2022.

During the hours of daylight, young Shurjomukhi’s family is like any other in Dhaka, going through the motions of school, work, and domesticity in a nation still in the flush of youth. But every night, once darkness falls over their asymmetrical house, they switch over to the Unknown world. Death does not exist in the Unknown side and the family is joined for dinner by Shurjo’s freedom fighter uncles, who were martyred in the tea gardens of Sylhet at the start of the 1971 Bangladesh liberation war, and her grandmother who killed herself by jumping into a well in the aftermath of 1947.

Author: Monica Ali

Lives in the UK

Website: https://www.monicaali.com/

She has written five books so far and has various accolades. “She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and in 2003 was named as one of Granta’s Best of Young British Novelists. She has been nominated for, amongst others, the Booker Prize, the George Orwell Prize, the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize and in the U.S. has been a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize.” From her website.

Brick Lane Published by Scribner, ISBN: 9780743243315, Date: 2003

After an arranged marriage to Chanu, a man twenty years older, Nazneen is taken to London, leaving her home and heart in the Bangladeshi village where she was born. Her new world is full of mysteries. As a good Muslim girl, Nazneen struggles to not question why things happen. She submits, as she must, to Fate and devotes herself to her husband and daughters. Yet to her amazement, she begins an affair with a handsome young radical, and her erotic awakening throws her old certainties into chaos.

Love Marriage Published by Scribner, ISBN: 978-1982181482, Date: 2023

In present-day London, Yasmin Ghorami is twenty-six, in training to be a doctor (like her Indian-born father), and engaged to the charismatic, upper-class Joe Sangster, whose formidable mother, Harriet, is a famous feminist. The gulf between families is vast. So, too, is the gulf in sexual experience between Yasmin and Joe.

As the wedding day draws near, misunderstandings, infidelities, and long-held secrets upend both Yasmin’s relationship and that of her parents, a “love marriage,” according to the family lore that Yasmin has believed all her life.

For her other book titles, check her website.

Curator of the #BangladeshiLitMonth at Global Literature in Libraries Initiative:

Erin Wilson currently works as a Teacher Librarian at International School Dhaka, Bangladesh and has worked internationally for 10 years in the following countries; China, India, and now Bangladesh. She has vast experience working in diverse cultures from Native American students to inner-city students and the international community. Her other passion lies in studying Asian dances. Currently she is focused on Odissi classical dance, and uses this dance vocabulary for storytelling in the library to actively engage children. It’s never boring in the library. 

You can follow the school where she works, International School Dhaka Instagram: @ isd_library

Opinions expressed in posts on this site are the individual author’s and are not indicative of the views of Global Literature in Libraries Initiative.