Shabnam By Syed Mujtaba Ali | Translated by Nazes Afroz

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Tanu Dogra: socialtanu@gmail.com

Join us for the launch of the translation by Nazes Afroz of Shabnam, written by Syed Mujtaba Ali. The launch will be followed by a conversation between Nazes Afroz, Husna Hashim and Shuddhabrata Sengupta.

Musical performance by Gheyas Rahimi, a young Afghan musician.

Afghanistan in the 1920s. A country on the cusp of change. And somewhere in it, a young man and woman meet and fall in love.

Shabnam is an Afghan woman, as beautiful as she is intelligent. Majnun is an Indian man, working in the country as a teacher. Theirs is an unlikely love story, but it flowers, nonetheless. Breaking the barriers of culture and language, the two souls meet. Shabnam is poetry personified—she knows the literary works of Farsi poets of different eras. Majnun is steeped in the language and thoughts of Bengal. Together, they find love in immortal words and in the wisdom of the ages.

As the country hurtles towards yet another cataclysmic change, and the ruling king flees into exile, Shabnam is in danger from those who covet her for her famous beauty. Can she save herself and her Indian lover and husband from them?

Shabnam has been hailed as one of the most beautiful love stories written in Bengali. Lyrical and tragic, this pathbreaking novel appears in English for the first time in an elegant translation by the translator of Syed Mujtaba Ali’s famous travelogue Deshe Bideshe (In a Land Far from Home).

© Sayantoni Palchoudhuri About the Translator
A journalist for over four decades, Nazes Afroz has worked in both print and broadcasting in Kolkata and London. He joined the BBC in London in 1998 and spent close to fifteen years with the organization. He has visited Afghanistan, Central Asia and West Asia regularly for over a decade. He currently writes in English and Bengali for various newspapers and magazines.