The author Laila Lalami recently discovered that her first book had been published in Pakistan in an unauthorized translation in Urdu. She writes: Not long ago, I received a kind email from a reader in Pakistan, telling me how much he enjoyed reading my first book, which he had read in its Urdu translation. An [...]

My short story collection Killing the Water: Stories was published in January 2010 by Penguin Books India. In the last few months, several reviews of the book have appeared in Indian and Bangladeshi publications. Some highlights: From Open Magazine, Delhi, India Rahman’s stories, all 12 of them, have backdrops as varied as the lingering smell [...]

Earlier this week, the morning, already dreary from the dampness and rain, brought the news that Leila Abu-Saba had died at her home in Oakland. Cancer finally took her. She had beat it before, but it returned. It is a familiar, painful story. Eight years ago, my younger sister, about the same age, died after [...]

Over at the Words Without Borders website, they’ve published their April issue. It includes Once Again Love, my translation of Shaheen Akhtar’s Bangla story “Abar Prem Ashche.” While you’re there, check out some of the other fine pieces too. Here’s the link to the story. I first heard about Shaheen Akhtar in late 2004 from [...]

On a recent visit to Calcutta, I learned a new word to describe what I sometimes engage in: flânerie.      I heard it at the Oxford Bookstore where they launched Memory’s Gold, a new anthology on Calcutta. Amit Chaudhuri, the editor, highlighted a section of the book titled ‘Flânerie’. It includes pieces on adda and the [...]

Sometime in the mid 1800s, magazine publishers in England launched Christmas specials to provide cheap reading material to the aspiring middle classes. The colonial conduit brought the custom to Calcutta, and when Bengali periodicals emerged, they launched holiday specials for Durga Puja. In the early 1900s, when Bengali Muslims started magazines they pioneered similar specials [...]