Selina Hossain: Portrayal of a Humanist Litterateur

 

Bangladesh’s literary canon is hugely diverse and includes writers of various styles, genres and political persuasions. However, several iconic figures hold sway over this literary world, who, through their pre-eminence and influence, have come to define Bangladesh’s literature both within the country and beyond. Born on 14 June 1947,Selina Hossainis one of the most famous literary figures in Bangladesh. She isthe current president of Bangla Academy since February 2022.

Her profound influence on contemporary literature is reflected in the extent to which she is personally credited for the magical realism genre, which has dominated literature across the country for decades, and continues to do so. Her literary works are based very much on her own experiences of life in the country, but it is simultaneously an exploration of the fantastical qualities of fiction, which can blur the boundaries between the real and the unreal, and can bend time, nature and geography to its will.

In Selina’s wistful tales, eruptions of the fantastic are regular occurrences and everyday life is conducted in a type of dreamlike abstraction or reverie. Nature is also transformed in her works and the lush and verdant world she creates becomes an embodiment for the nostalgic longing that defines her works. Her Bangladesh is a correlative of her own melancholic reverence for the past, and is entwined in the tumultuous history of Bangladesh.

She remains highly acclaimed throughout Bangladesh and elsewhere of the Bangla speaking communities, where her influence on literature is tangible, and where she is known affectionately as ‘Selina Apa’. She is a defining influence on our literature, and is a symbol of her engagement in the complex political and nationalist scene in much of the literary circle in Bangladesh.

Her output is hugely prolific and she poured everything she has into her writings, creating a unique and deeply profound body of work, through which the drama of our own lives.  She was a national litterateur, who has constructed an image of Bangladesh in his works which is both idealistic and melancholy, which looks forward towards a good future, and romanticized a long forgotten and indistinct past. By this time Selina Hossain has an established reputation as one of the greatest literary figures of her age, and played an important part in a poetic sense.

However, her hopes for her country were to be dashed as she witnessed the ferocity of Bangabandhu’s downfall and the oppression of the Zia and Ershad regimes as they forced their way into power. Her life story informs the mythology of the inextricable connection between literary endeavour and politics in Bangladesh, a paradigm which she embodies and which still holds sway in this most politically conscious country. However, her legacy will remain the works: sorrowful, ruminative and elegiac recordings of her love, affections and regrets which retain a lyrical beauty that transcends the political conflicts in which she has been embroiled.

A towering presence in Bengali literature, and social circles, she has been the most prominent of this triumvirate of Bangladeshi icons in recent decades. She would expand her canvas with works which have brought her to the attention of a wider audience and escalated her to the forefront of the Bangladesh’s literary boom, of which she would later be hailed as a leading member. Literary circles have marked her acceptance as a major writer on the Bengali scene, and one who is not afraid to speak truth to power, or to unflinchingly portray the murkier aspects of her own country’s society.

She is a writer who inhabits a unique place in the Bangladesh’s literary canon. However, the power of her literary creations means that she is united at the forefront of the Bangladesh’s literary canon, and remains an iconic writer, who has done more than anyone to define the literature of Bangladesh. She is one of the most talented figures of Bangladesh’s literature. She has a gift for sketching comfortable worlds and then disrupting them with images of bright, startling power.

In one sense, singling out a group of female writers as eminently worthy of attention, she feels like an injustice to a gender who has published an immeasurable amount of profound, enduring literature. At the same time, recognizing great female authors is an exercise, we are to dedicate in undertaking again and again emphatically, enthusiastically, and unapologetically. We admire for her vision, her fearlessness, her originality, and her impact on the literary world and beyond. Her writings map delineates the territory of the struggle of selfhood, consciousness, history, and art with strength, creativity, and fierce empathy. Her work and her rich language will move us.

She is one of the best story writers in Bangladesh today, hands-down — her incredible, sharp-edged novels, short stories, essays and other write-ups, her precise minimalist style, her devastating and poignancy have made her a touchstone and influence for other contemporary writers. Her gifted writing power frequently shimmers with an innocent beauty, and so many of her passages nearly radiate from the pages.  She may well be one of the most brilliant writers we haven't yet had the honour of reading.

She is the type of author we read through the times and think about long after we have finished. Selina Hossain is an author most people know from school or because they see her books on lists of important literature. Reading of her is a true masterpiece, something to be enjoyed for its savoured; for its razor-sharp novel, short stories, essays, and admired for their timelessness. Her every book is an illuminating and riveting account, filled with stories that are finely crafted, meticulously researched.

Her writing is insightful, honest, unpretentious, and eye-opening. The enthusiasm she feels for our people is contagious and shines through on every page of the classic in nature. She is a true original. Her spare, no-nonsense style and acute observational skills completely change the way we view literary works, and the influence she has had on generations of authors is immeasurable. Her work has endured in ways others have not.She gives the reader a wealth of information in order to better understand the big picture.

All her meaty books, full of big ideas and well worth the read. Her every literary works has a train-wreck quality; we can't seem to look away from the characters. Are they despicable or well-meaning people floundering in a situation beyond their control? The story exposes the heart and soul of the…reservation, across generations. Her writing is colorful and melodic throughout, with breathtaking passages like her depiction of everything is elusive, pregnant with history, her thoughts finned off and not vanished. The same colour is as water. Fans and readers new to Selina Hossain alike should not miss her classic writings.

She is a master at conveying the inner landscape of her characters, and her novels are frequently peppered with sharp and incisive social commentary. Adored by both readers and critics, she has published so many literary works, and has won countless accolades from both inside and outside the country. She brings her world alive for the readers in vivid and incandescent detail. She has written novels, plays, short stories, essays, and other books, but it's not surprising that she is best known for her every literary works. She is a master of stark, poetic prose, acclaimed for her relentless themes of torment.

She is one of the most eloquent, urgent, and intelligent voices writing fiction in Bangladesh. Her marvelous books might be her most poetic, ecstatic works. These are about the spaces between stability and risk, solitude, and the occasional claustrophobia of ordinary life. With dreamlike transitions, she considers a variety of examples which contrast created wildness with natural wilderness, she explores the mysterious without puncturing the mystery, and that is a remarkable achievement indeed.

Few people are naturally great at giving speeches and even fewer enjoy it. But her delivering a speech shall be perceived as interesting, sweet-listening and magical effects to most people. She is a gifted master speaker because of her sweet voice, rich language and mesmerising power of delivery for captivating the audience. Whenever she makes any speech, it can be considered as articulate, clean, crisp, declamatory, eloquent, emphatic, flowery, fluent, formal, learned, literary, lyrical, picturesque, poetic, polemical, portentous, readable, roundly, and stylistic. She can cast a spell-bound on the audience because of her power of style of delivering any speech and she is her exception.

She obtained her Masters with B.A. (Hons.) in Bengali Literature in 1968 from Rajshahi University,Bangladesh. Eminent litterateur Selina Hossain is a household name in Bangladesh’s cultural circle. Several of her books are in the syllabus of universities both at home and abroad.  “Her stories have been translated into English, Hindi, Marathi, Kannada, Malayalam, Russian and French. In Selina's writings, one can sense her rage against the colonial rulers of undivided India, and the Pakistani hegemonic forces that had tried to subjugate the people of Bangladesh under their authoritarian sway.

Selina Hossain is extremely vocal against all kinds of local patriarchal institutions and practices that try to suppress the voice of the subalterns of Bangladesh. The cause of the oppressed women and abused children of Bangladesh is yet another area of her genuine concern. Many of her fiction depict poverty stricken, uneducated women fighting against the prevalent structure of traditional families and marriages. She is one of the leading contemporary feminist writers of Bangladesh. She is a humanist litterateur in Bangladesh and if we read her, it let us to remember the lines of a poem of Shakespeare:

“Thou art a Monument, without a tomb
And art alive still, while thy Book doth live,
And we have wits to read, and praise to give."
Long live Selina Hossain in good health and in good spirits.


Anwar A. Khan is a freedom
fighter who writes on politics
and international issues.