The narrator, Indian born and English educated, traces events back and forth in time, from the outbreak of World War II to the late twentieth century, through years of Bengali partition and violence, observing the ways in which political events invade private lives.

    But most of all, this environmental ethics textbook shows you how we can work together to build a better future.

    Henry Prize Stories 2017 contains twenty breathtaking stories--by a vibrant mix of established and emerging writers--selected by the series editor from the thousands published in literary magazines over the previous year. The collection includes essays by the three eminent guest jurors on their favorite stories, observations from the winning writers on what inspired them, and a comprehensive resource list of the many magazines and journals, both large and small, that publish short fiction."Too Good To Be True," Michelle Huneven"Something for a Young Woman," Genevieve Plunkett"The Buddhist," Alan Rossi"Garments," Tahmima Anam"Protection," Paola Peroni"Night Garden," Shruti Swamy"A Cruelty," Kevin Barry"Floating Garden," Mary La Chapelle"The Trusted Traveler," Joseph O'Neill"Blue Dot," Keith Eisner"Lion," Wil Weitzel"Paddle to Canada," Heather Monley"A Small Sacrifice for an Enormous Happiness," Jai Chakrabarti"The Bride and the Street Party," Kate Cayley"Secret Lives of the Detainees," Amit Majmudar"Glory," Lesley Nneka Arimah"Mercedes Benz," Martha Cooley"The Reason Is Because," Manuel Munoz"The Family Whistle," Gerard Woodward"Buttony," Fiona McFarlaneThe jurors this year are David Bradley, Elizabeth McCracken, and Brad Watson.For author interviews, photos, and more, go to www.ohenryprizestories.com

    Gary J. Bass shows how Nixon and Kissinger supported Pakistan’s military dictatorship as it brutally quashed the results of a historic free election. The Pakistani army launched a crackdown on what was then East Pakistan (today an independent Bangladesh), killing hundreds of thousands of people and sending ten million refugees fleeing to India—one of the worst humanitarian crises of the twentieth century.Nixon and Kissinger, unswayed by detailed warnings of genocide from American diplomats witnessing the bloodshed, stood behind Pakistan’s military rulers. Driven not just by Cold War realpolitik but by a bitter personal dislike of India and its leader Indira Gandhi, Nixon and Kissinger actively helped the Pakistani government even as it careened toward a devastating war against India. They silenced American officials who dared to speak up, secretly encouraged China to mass troops on the Indian border, and illegally supplied weapons to the Pakistani military—an overlooked scandal that presages Watergate.Drawing on previously unheard White House tapes, recently declassified documents, and extensive interviews with White House staffers and Indian military leaders, The Blood Telegram tells this thrilling, shadowy story in full. Bringing us into the drama of a crisis exploding into war, Bass follows reporters, consuls, and guerrilla warriors on the ground—from the desperate refugee camps to the most secretive conversations in the Oval Office. Bass makes clear how the United States’ embrace of the military dictatorship in Islamabad would mold Asia’s destiny for decades, and confronts for the first time Nixon and Kissinger’s hidden role in a tragedy that was far bloodier than Bosnia. This is a revelatory, compulsively readable work of politics, personalities, military confrontation, and Cold War brinksmanship.

    As the child of Bangladeshi immigrants, the poet in turn explores her own losses, as well as the complexities of bearing witness to the atrocities these war heroines endured.Throughout the volume, the narrator endeavors to bridge generational and cultural gaps even as the victims recount the horror of grief and personal loss. As we read, we discover the profound yet fragile seam that unites the fields, rivers, and prisons of the 1971 war with the poet’s modern-day hotel, or the tragic death of a loved one with the holocaust of a nation.Moving from West Texas to Dubai, from Virginia to remote villages in Bangladesh and back again, the narrator calls on the legacies of Willa Cather, César Vallejo, Tomas Tranströmer, and Paul Celan to give voice to the voiceless. Fierce yet loving, devastating and magical at once, Seam is a testament to the lingering potency of memory and the bravery of a nation’s victims. Winner, Great Lakes Colleges Association New Writers Award, 2014 Winner, Binghamton University Milt Kessler Poetry Book Award, 2015

    With great poignancy, Ali illuminates a foreign world; her well-developed characters pull readers along on a deeply psychological, almost spiritual journey. Through the eyes of two Bangladeshi sisters—the plain Nazneen and the prettier Hasina—we see the divergent paths of the contemporary descendants of an ancient culture. Hasina elopes to a "love marriage," and young Nazneen, in an arranged marriage, is pledged to a much older man living in London. Ali's skillful narrative focuses on Nazneen's stifling life with her ineffectual husband, who keeps her imprisoned in a city housing project filled with immigrants in varying degrees of assimilation. But Ali reveals a bittersweet tension between the "two kinds of love" Nazneen and her sister experience—that which begins full and overflowing, only to slowly dissipate, and another which emerges like a surprise, growing unexpectedly over years of faithful commitment. Both of these loves have their own pitfalls: Hasina's passionate romance crumbles into domestic violence, and Nazneen's marriage never quite reaches a state of wedded bliss.Though comparisons have drawn between Ali and Zadie Smith, a better comparison might be made between this talented newcomer and the work of Amy Tan, who so deftly portrays the immigrant experience with empathy and joy.

    His work visa has expired and he may soon be forced out of the United States and back to his home country of Bangladesh. Clinging to the remaining weeks he has left with his young American daughter, Shar reflects upon his family’s history, beginning in a village on the Bay of Bengal, where a poor fisherman, Jamir, and his wife, Honufa, prepare to face a storm of historic proportions.Spilling across tense, crucial moments in history, Jamir and Honufa’s story intersects with other lives, like that of Ichiro, a Japanese pilot fighting in a war he does not understand; Claire, a British doctor in danger during the anti-colonialist Burmese rebellions; and Rahim and Zahira, a privileged couple in Calcutta uprooted to East Pakistan by the Partition of India.With a narrative sweep mirroring the storm’s devastating path—leading to the eye’s calamitous landing—The Storm explores hope, loss, sacrifice, and the many ways in which families honor, betray, and ultimately love one another.

    Which meant that even in the eyes of Allah, ‘forty’ held some special meaning. Something special happened at forty, something special was going to happen.For the sisters Lovely and Beauty, home is a cage. Their mother Farida Khanam never lets them out of her hawk-eyed gaze.Leesa Gazi’s Hellfire opens with Lovely's first ever solo expedition to Gausia Market on her fortieth birthday. There will be many firsts for her today, but she mustn’t forget the curfew Farida Khanam has ordained. As Lovely roams the streets of Dhaka, her mother’s carefully constructed world begins to unravel. The twisted but working arrangements of a fragile household begin to assume a macabre quality as the day progresses.Told in stark, taut prose, this grisly tale of a family born of a dark secret is one of the most scintillating debuts in contemporary Bengali literature.

    . . It's the feeling of being pulled into something and being unable to stop it happening . . .Tabitha is used to changing schools and moving to different houses. But when her family moves into Weston Manor, something is different. It's as if the house has been waiting for her. There are lavender smells which come from nowhere, the old servants' bells ring in the night, and she can hear crying in empty rooms. Tabitha's always been imaginative. Even her best friend Gemma knows that. But this time, could she actually be telling the truth?

    In this book he is back at his adventurous best tie-ing in with a major BBC TV series. The book/series will travel through many countries little known to the West, providing opportunities for Palinesque adventures to please the large and loyal audience who followed 80 Days, Pole to Pole and Full Circle.

    Indonesian Ferry Sinks.  Peruvian Bus Plunges Off Cliff.  African Train Attacked by Mobs.  Whenever he picked up the newspaper, Carl Hoffman noticed those short news bulletins, which seemed about as far from the idea of tourism, travel as the pursuit of pleasure, as it was possible to get.  So off he went, spending six months circumnavigating the globe on the world's worst conveyances: the statistically most dangerous airlines, the most crowded and dangerous ferries, the slowest buses, and the most rickety trains.  The Lunatic Express takes us into the heart of the world, to some its most teeming cities and remotest places: from Havana to Bogotá on the perilous Cuban Airways.  Lima to the Amazon on crowded night buses where the road is a washed-out track.  Across Indonesia and Bangladesh by overcrowded ferries that kill 1,000 passengers a year.  On commuter trains in Mumbai so crowded that dozens perish daily, across Afghanistan as the Taliban closes in, and, scariest of all, Los Angeles to Washington, D.C., by Greyhound.The Lunatic Express is the story of traveling with seatmates and deckmates who have left home without American Express cards on conveyances that don't take Visa, and seldom take you anywhere you'd want to go.   But it's also the story of traveling as it used to be -- a sometimes harrowing trial, of finding adventure in a modern, rapidly urbanizing world and the generosity of poor strangers, from ear cleaners to urban bus drivers to itinerant roughnecks, who make up most of the world's population.  More than just an adventure story, The Lunatic Express is a funny, harrowing and insightful look at the world as it is, a planet full of hundreds of millions of people, mostly poor, on the move and seeking their fortunes.

    and suddenly one day she falls in love with one....

    His life is mostly on an even keel until he sits down to chronicle his childhood - an endeavour that draws him inexorably into his memories and into an enchanting world somewhere in suburban Calcutta. He remembers the girl who spoke to fish and birds, the girl he first loved. He recalls the stream of visitors to his parents' door those days, some bearing want, some malice and others, generosity and wisdom. As those memories return him to a time when communal tension was gathering force in undivided Bengal and the trauma it brought to his younger self, Khaleq's remembrance stops being a pleasant retreat. He becomes desperately despondent. Khaleq's relentless nostalgia enrages his wife Rekha, who resents his lack of ambition and aloofness. Prodded by the village physician, Doctor Narhari, the couple embark on a boat ride that forces them to confront their discord and desires, and plumb the roots of Abdul Khaleq's alienation.First published in 1977 in Bengali, Black Ice draws on Mahmudul Haque's own experience of Partition to intimately probe the invisible scars bequeathed to the inheritors of Partition.

    Very poignantly written, this is arguably Zahir Raihan’s best novel and certainly one of the milestones of contemporary Bangla literature.

    Fireflies in the Mist is Hyder's capstone to her astonishing River of Fire, which was hailed by The New York Review of Books as "magisterial with a technical resourcefulness rarely seen before in Urdu fiction."Fireflies follows the creation of modern day Bangladesh -- from Indian province, to Partition, to the emergence of statehood -- as told through the impassioned voice of Deepali Sarkar and others around her who live through the turbulence. Hyder perceptively and majestically follows the trajectory of Sarkar's life -- from her secluded upbringing in Dhaka to becoming a socialist rebel and to her ultimate transformation as a diasporic Bengali cosmopolitan -- in the way that many of yesterday's revolutionaries are slowly but surely ensnared within a net of class and luxury dangled in front of them.