Description
A bright and brilliant new voice from Bangladesh.
On and on we dream, we wish, we love — no
matter that the dreams come to an end, the wishes evolve or that love
dissipates like dust in the wind. Perhaps, what matters only is that we
have lived long enough to dream, hard enough to wish and indisputably
enough to love.
One of Maria’s early memories growing up
in Dhaka is of planning to run away with her friend Nadia. Even then,
Maria couldn’t quite figure out why she longed to escape.
It is
not that home is an unhappy place. It is just that in her family, joy is
ephemeral. With a mother who yearns for the mountains, the solitude and
freedom to pursue her own dreams and career, and a charismatic but
distant father who finds it difficult to expresses emotion, they are
never able to hold on to happiness for very long.
Maria studies
the Holy Book, says her daily prayers and wonders if God is watching
her. She dreams, like her mother, of unstitching the seam of her life.
It is her neighbour, Bablu, the Imitator of Frogs, who both excites and
repulses Maria by showing her a yellowing pornographic magazine, but it
is Mala, a girl her own age who comes to work in their house, whose wise
eyes and wicked smile makes her dizzy with longing. When she moves to
New England for university at eighteen Maria meets Yameen, a man who
lives in a desperately squalid apartment in Jersey City, woos her with
phone calls and a marathon night of drinking in New York bars, and is
not what he seems…
From Dhaka to New York, this is a candid and
moving account of growing up and growing away, a meditation on why
people leave their homes and why they sometimes find it difficult to
return. Beloved Strangers is an unforgettable memoir marking the arrival of a brilliant new voice from Bangladesh.
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Available Editions
| EDITION | Other Format |
| ISBN | 9781408844601 |
| PRICE | £14.99 (GBP) |
Available on NetGalley
| (PDF) |
| (PDF) |




