“Amed was uncompromising in what he chose to express, and he did so entirely on his own terms.”- Kathakali Jana (Translator)
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Team Kitaab is in conversation with Kathakali Jana, translator of Qissa of Bibi in Black Burqa and Forty Men (The Antonym Mag, 2025), originally written in Bengali by Afsar Amed.
Kathakali Jana is the head of administration and events at the ITC Sangeet Research Academy in Kolkata. A critic and connoisseur of performing arts, she writes reviews for numerous mainstream and niche publications. She has translated Nata da, by acclaimed Bengali novelist Swapnamay Chakrabarty, into English. It came out in 2023 under the title The Ruffian.
About the Book
Qissa of Bibi in Black Burqa and Forty Men– A Poetic Journey of Memory, Womanhood, and Mystical Resistance
For readers of Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things and Elif Shafak’s The Forty Rules of Love, comes a bold and poetic exploration of memory, womanhood, and inner transformation.
This Indian magical realism novel blends fiction of mystical resistance with lyrical prose, offering a rare journey through the symbolic and emotional.
Bibi walks cloaked not just in a black burqa, but in veils of emotion, silence, and stories untold.
Her path intersects with forty archetypal male figures—each representing love, power, longing, trauma, and healing. What unfolds is a collection of South Asian literary fiction that is deeply introspective, stylistically experimental, and emotionally rich.
