Bio

Mahmud Rahman is a writer and Bengali-to-English translator living in Philadelphia. Born in Dhaka, he came of age during the upheaval that led to the creation of Bangladesh. He completed an MFA in fiction from Mills College in Oakland, California, during which he worked on a collection of stories. His book Killing the Water: Stories was published in 2010 (Penguin India). His translation of Haque’s novel Black Ice was published in 2012 (HarperCollins India).

Project Description

To support the translation of the novel My Sister, Life by Mahmudul Haque from Bengali. Haque (1941-2008) was an award-winning author of ten novels and dozens of stories who made his living managing a family jewelry shop in Dhaka, Bangladesh. My Sister, Life is one of the most significant works of fiction from Bangladesh, written in 1972, within months of the country gaining independence from Pakistan. The story is set entirely in March 1971 during the non-cooperation movement, a historical uprising in then-East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) against the military government of Pakistan. The title of the novel was a tribute to the Russian poet and novelist Boris Pasternak's poem, "My Sister, Life." Rahman will collaborate on this project with the writer and translator Shabnam Nadiya.