A young woman moves to Toronto after getting married but soon discovers her husband is not who she believes him to be. A mother reconciles her heartbreak when her sons defy her expectations and choose their own paths in life. A lonely international student returns to Bangladesh and forms an unexpected bond with her domestic helper. A working-class woman, caught between her love for Bangladesh and her determination to raise her daughter in Canada, makes a life-altering decision after a dark secret from the past is revealed.In each of the stories, characters embark on difficult journeys in search of love, dignity, and a sense of belonging.

    Who is a Muslim? destabilizes traditional constructions of postcolonial literary histories through the specific example of Urdu by suggesting that this North-India vernacular, far from secular or progressive, has been shaped as the authority designate around the intertwined questions of piety, national identity, and citizenship.

    Here, readers will find all the greats of Bangladeshi literature: in Kazi Nazrul Islam’s timeless masterpiece, ‘The Demoness’, a woman’s fury is unleashed when she learns that her husband is getting married again; ‘The Raincoat’ by Akhtaruzzaman Elias brings to life the traumatic effect of war on ordinary people; Shawkat Ali’s ‘The Final Resting Place’ is concerned with love, grief, and the human capacity for recovery; in Hasan Azizul Huq’s ‘Nameless and Casteless’, an unnamed protagonist accidentally witnesses the hidden horrors of war; and Anwara Syed Haq’s ‘Pagli’ is a sharp commentary on madness and trauma. Exceptional in subject, theme, and style, these and the other stories in The Demoness reveal an extraordinary picture of a land and its people.