A Divided Legacy The Partition in Selected Novels of India, Pakistan and Bangladesh Niaz Zaman ISBN 984 05 1471 7 1999 358pp 215x136mm HB Tk.500.00 US$27.00
A Divided Legacy is perhaps the first book to analyze Partition novels in three major languages of the Indian sub-continent: English, Bengali and Urdu. In addition, Punjabi novels available in English translation have also been included. The book is thus an important addition to the numerous writings that have appeared in recent years on an event that not only created two nation states but also affected the psyche of the people who had been thus divided. Part of the collective memory of the sub-continent, the Partition generates diverse responses from the generation that witnessed it and the children who inherited their legacy. A Divided Legacy examines both the detailed narratives that have been written on the Partition as well as novels that, either written in the late forties or situated around 1947, choose to be disturbingly silent.
Niaz Zaman is Professor and Chairperson, Department of English, University of Dhaka. She has also taught at the University of Chittagong and George Washington University. From 1982 to 1983, she served as Educational Attach6 in the Bangladesh Embassy at Washington DC. She has received numerous honours: Guest Lecturer at conferences in Mekrijarvi, Finland, and Hyderabad, India; SAVSP Fellow at Queen Elizabeth House, Oxford; Visiting Scholar at the University of Delhi; Visiting Professor at North South University, Bangladesh. She has several publications to her credit: Other Englishes-Essays on Common wealth Writing (co-editor), Infinite Variety Women in Society and Literature (co-editor), Different Perspectives: Women Writing in Bangladesh (co-editor), Short Stories from Bangladesh. In addition to editorial and critical work, she has published a volume of short stories: The! Dance and Other Stories. She is an occasional columnist for the weekly Holiday.
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