Novels
Waliullah is often considered the pioneer of existential analysis of the characters psyche in the literature of Bangladesh. The last two of his three novels, specially Kando Nadi Kando, show his mastery in revealing the inner depths of his characters. However, his most famous work remains Lalsalu, some would argue because of its relative simplicity.
Lalsalu tells the story of Majid, a poor man from a devout muslim background. Majid comes to a remote village. He declares an old grave to be the majar (mausoleum) that of a pir (a Muslim saint), covers it with the traditional red cloth used for mausoleums, and establishes his stronghold on the life of the people using the reflected power on him of the supposed saint. The novel shows his struggle with other religious figures trying to establish dominance, the undercurrent of pagan ideas among the people, and his own weaknesses.
"Tree Without Roots is the English translation of Syed Waliullah's much-admired Lal Shalu (Red Cloth). Though not admitted by Syed Waliullah, it is now fairly established that the English rendering was really done by the novelist himself, which explains why this new version is, in some respects, different from the original text in Bengali. In Tree Without Roots there are abridgements and alterations, and an important addition to the ending, which no one but the writer himself could have made. Moreover, in the original novel there are intricacies and suggestiveness of language, particularly in the dialogues, which would have been difficult, if not impossible, for an outsider to put into English as satisfactorily as has been done in Tree Without Roots. This work is certainly a revised and improved version of Lal Shalu."
Lalsalu was recently filmed by Tanvir Mokammel.
Read more about this topic: Syed Waliullah
Famous quotes containing the word novels:
“Of all my novels this bright brute is the gayest.”
—Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977)
“Compare the history of the novel to that of rock ‘n’ roll. Both started out a minority taste, became a mass taste, and then splintered into several subgenres. Both have been the typical cultural expressions of classes and epochs. Both started out aggressively fighting for their share of attention, novels attacking the drama, the tract, and the poem, rock attacking jazz and pop and rolling over classical music.”
—W. T. Lhamon, U.S. educator, critic. “Material Differences,” Deliberate Speed: The Origins of a Cultural Style in the American 1950s, Smithsonian (1990)
“The present era grabs everything that was ever written in order to transform it into films, TV programmes, or cartoons. What is essential in a novel is precisely what can only be expressed in a novel, and so every adaptation contains nothing but the non-essential. If a person is still crazy enough to write novels nowadays and wants to protect them, he has to write them in such a way that they cannot be adapted, in other words, in such a way that they cannot be retold.”
—Milan Kundera (b. 1929)