“I have always been writing. Perhaps because I grew up in mofussil towns and I had to entertain myself.”- Niaz Zaman (Bangladeshi Writer and translator)

Team Kitaab is in conversation with Bangladeshi writer and translator Niaz Zaman as a part of the South Asian Women Writers Feature.

For the whole of March, we will be featuring South Asian Women Writers on Kitaab. You can read the editor’s note to know more about this.

Today, we are featuring an academic, writer, and translator from Bangladesh, Niaz Zaman.

Her forte is the short story. Her short story collections are The Dance and Other Stories, Didima’s Necklace and Other Stories, The Maidens’ Club, and Selected Stories. Her novels include The Crooked Neem Tree, The Baromashi Tapes, and A Different Sita.

She initiated the group translation of Kazi Nazrul Islam’s novel Bandhon Hara, published as Unfettered.  She also translated Nazrul Islam’s novel Mrityukshudha as Love and Death in Krishnanagar and co-translated his Kuhelika as The Revolutionary.  For her contribution to translation, she received the Bangla Academy Award for Translation in 2016. She lives in Dhaka, Bangladesh.