Description
Finalist for the 2022 International Book Awards in Multicultural Fiction and Winner (Bronze Medal) of the 2022 IPPY Book Awards in Multicultural Fiction
In the title story in this new short story collection, amidst the soft ripples of the village pond and the mirthful croaking of frogs, the demons of Ruby and Monir's fairy tale life fade away. Readers are introduced to a kaleidoscope of distinctive and unique social, cultural and centuries old traditional rural lifestyle elements in a remote village of Bangladesh. The many shades of war, its aftermath, historical distinctiveness, and rebellion forever permeate the air and the lives of the villagers. Today, diasporic literature is an integral component of the international literary fabric of timely storytelling. DUSK IN THE FROG POND is a collection of eight short stories that explore the lives of immigrants as they deal with the challenges of migration, displacement, identity, nostalgia, loneliness, socio-economic disparity, and cultural assimilation. A particular focus is the theme of arranged marriages. The main characters are Muslim women in or from Bangladesh. Some of the marriages are happy. In others the women feel isolated, often trapped and always unloved. These are powerful stories, reflecting joy and sorrow, never forgetting the eternally burning fire of hope that both lives and dies within all of us, and depicting culture, tradition, and past history in parallel force with today’s modernized world.
Fiction. Women's Studies. Short Stories.
Author Bio
Rummana Chowdhury is the author of forty-three books, in both Bengali and English, which include poetry, short stories, novels, and essays. She is a leading global commentator on issues of migration that pertain to the South Asian Diaspora, violence against women, diasporic literature, translation, cultural and historical remembrance strategies, and feminist politics and culture. She has received several notable awards including Woman of the Year, 2010, Canada, and Best Writer and Translator for Diaspora Literature, Ontario Bengali Cultural Society, 2016. She has also received several awards for her contributions to Bengali, English and Diasporic literature and translation work, including, most recently, the Kobi Jasim Uddin Award, 2019, and the Bangladesh Lekhika Shongho Award for Literature and Translation, 2017. She immigrated to Canada in 1982 and for the past thirty has worked as an accredited interpreter/ translator. She lives in Mississauga, Ontario.
Author City: BRAMPTON, ON CAN