Song of our Swampland - Softcover

Syed Manzurul (Manzu) Islam

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1845231708 ISBN 13: 9781845231705

Publisher: Peepal Tree Press, 2010

Synopsis

When the killing starts in Dhaka, the villagers know the army from West Pakistan will soon be in their area, but unlike the other young men, and his beloved step-sister Moni Banu, Kamal cannot join the resistance. Born with a hole for a mouth, most people, except Abbas Miah, the teacher who adopts him, his friends and Moni Banu, regard him as the village idiot.

With Abbas Miah, Kamal embarks on a Noah's ark journey, with the motley survivors of the massacre that inevitably comes, to find refuge in the distant floodplains until the war is over. Along with a bombastic old actor, the village mullah, the village cut-throat, two Hindu boatmen, a foul-mouthed old woman, and a pious Islamist, who might just be a collaborator, Kamal discovers that there can be no escape from the war and the issues it raises.

As our guide to the painful emergence of the new nation of Bangladesh, Kamal is forced both to observe the face of evil, the complexity of betrayal, and look within to discover whether he has the capacity for true community, whether he can follow the injunction:

'If someone knocks on your door, you don't ask who it is. You don't even look at their face. You just do everything you can for them.'

Syed Manzurul (Manzu) Islam was born in 1953 in a small northeastern town in East Pakistan (later Bangladesh). He has a doctorate and was Reader in English at the University of Gloucestershire, specialising in postcolonial literature and creative writing

About this title

About the Author

Manzu Islam was born in Bangladesh where he lived through the 1971 war, walking the swamps for weeks to reach the refugee camps in India, then returning to fight as a freedom fighter. He came to England as a political refugee and, after studying for a degree and working as a racial harassment officer in East London, he became interested in writing. He has written four earlier books including The Mapmakers of Spitalfields (1997), an anthology of short stories set both in Bangladesh and the East End, Burrow (2004) about an illegal immigrant in East London and The Song of our Swampland (2011).

Edition details

• Publisher: Peepal Tree Press
• Publication date: 2010
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1845231708
• ISBN 13: 9781845231705
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 340