Book Review: Dozakhnama - Conversations in Hell
Death can be endured, Shafia, but memory cannot. We can bear many hard blows in life, Shafia. Maybe we don't even remember them afterwards. But some written words can make us cry every time. A story holds nothing but memories, after all.Exhumed from dust, Saadat Hasan Manto's unpublished novel surfaces in Lucknow. Not conversant in Urdu, the tale-teller of the story gets in touch with Tabassum, a lady knowing the language in order to translate the novel from Urdu to Bengali. As Tabassum makes the author understand the narrative, the story gradually unfolds. In Dozakhnama: Conversations in Hell, Manto and Mirza Ghalib converse from their respective graves that are apart both in distance and time, entwining their lives in shared dreams. The result is an intellectual journey that takes us into the people and events that shape us as a culture.
Originally written in Bengali by Rabisankar Bal and translated into English by Arunava Sinha, Dozakhnama is not a rigid Historical Fiction. In essence it is a meandering tale in which two of the great literary stalwarts who are separated from each other by almost a century and by a distance of that between Delhi and Lahore, take turns to tell the story of their lives and the time periods they lived in. The author has tremendous command over the story line and these conversations in hell never appear to detach from the flow. It is hard to realize that this is actually a novel inside a novel and the reader is tempted to follow an actual conversation between Manto and Ghalib from their graves and get a fantastic view of the socio political landscape of the time period in Indian History.
The book is not an easy read though. Following a loose plot structure in which conversations from graves build the worlds, the book demands a well deserved share of attention. Rich with couplets, Dozakhnama is a must read if you are interested in the lives of these two literary genius in this part fantasy part historical setting. The review remains incomplete without commenting on the translation. Arunava Sinha deserves applause for a truly remarkable job because of which the book has never lost its original smell and intent.
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A page turner for the devoted reader. I had received the review copy from Random House India. Thank you Rukun for giving me this opportunity. You can buy this book at amazon or at Flipkart in case you live in India.
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1 Thought:
Has it been translated in Urdu ? Pl. inform.
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