A BIOGRAPHY OF HUMAYUN AZAD

Azad’s first book, Alaukik Istimar (lit. ‘Unearthly steamer,’ was released in 1973, the same year he moved to Scotland to pursue his Ph.D. in Linguistics at the University of Edinburgh. In 1979, he wrote a short story called Onoboroto Tusharpat (lit. ‘Heavy snowing’) that was inspired by his newlywed life with his Dhaka University classmate Latifa Kohinoor; after their marriage in 1975, he took Latifa to Scotland, where one day amid heavy snowing Azad was driving a car with his wife, which became the main plot of the short story; Many years later, Azad included this short story in his 1996 book Jadukorer Mrityu (lit. ‘Death of the Magician,’ which is a collection of five short stories written by him.)

He began writing a newspaper column about current social topics around the end of the 1980s. His musings lasted well into the 1990s, and as the quantity of them rose, he decided to publish them as books. He established himself as a novelist via his writings in the 1990s and early 2000s.

Azad released Naree, the first comprehensive feminist book in Bengali, in 1992. As a treatise, Naree garnered both favorable and critical reviews, and it was hailed as the first full-fledged feminist work published after Bangladesh’s independence.

His debut novel, Chhappanno Hajar Borgomail (lit. ‘Fifty-six thousand square miles, the size of Bangladesh,’ was released in 1994, and it was about military dictatorship in Bangladesh during the 1980s decade. His second work, Sab Kichu Bhene Pare (1995), was centered on interpersonal relationships in Bangladeshi culture and received exceptional appreciation. He authored Ekti Khuner Svapna (lit. ‘Dreaming of a Murder,’ an unrequited love-based book in which the main male protagonist stays in Salimullah Muslim Hall of Dhaka University, where Azad lived during his college years. It was Azad’s final work, released in 2004, the year he died. Kobi Othoba Dondito Aupurush (lit. ‘The poet or the condemned eunuch’) and Nijer Shonge Nijer Jiboner Modhu (lit. ‘The honey of one’s life with himself’) are two important novels. The first is based on a fictional late twentieth-century Bangladeshi male poet who is castrated after engaging in a live-in relationship with a much younger woman, while the latter was inspired by Humayun Az Fali Fali Kore Kata Chand (lit. ‘The divided moon’) is another notable work by Azad, in which the primary female protagonist character Shirin is an educated young woman with self-boastfulness, who participates in adultery, leaves her husband, and becomes misandrist.

Azad also created teen fiction, including the discourse-book Laal Neel Deepabali, which was designed for teenage boys and girls with Azad’s goal of teaching Bangladeshi adolescent boys and girls about Bengali literature in a concise manner.