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A review by quicksilvermoon
Hellfire by Leesa Gazi, Shabnam Nadiya
4.0
Another one picked up in the mad rush of The Bookworm's closing sales. For some reason, though they are completely different beasts, it had me thinking of the one I just finished (Rumaysa). I mean, turbulent Muslim girls imprisoned at home by overprotective maternal figures, it’s hard not to see the similarities.
In Hellfire, we see two women, Lovely and Beauty, practically living under house arrest, under the watchful eyes of their mother, the formidable Farida Begum. On Lovely’s 40th birthday, she gets the unprecedented permission to make an excursion to Gawsia Market. This is a stone flung so hard at the placid waters of a life they had been used to, that the entire system comes crashing down. Although the main action takes place in the course of a single day, the narrative weaves back and forth between past and present, switching perspectives from Lovely to Beauty to Farida Begum, peeling back the sordid layers and the dirty secrets of this strange little family, until the shocking end seems only inevitable.
Leesa Gazi manages to spin a fascinating yarn about tradition and repression, madness and desire. And not that a writer of Shabnam Nadiya's calibre requires my endorsement, but her translation somehow made me hear the cadence of the original Bangla without detracting from the enjoyment of reading it in English. A fantastic piece of work!
In Hellfire, we see two women, Lovely and Beauty, practically living under house arrest, under the watchful eyes of their mother, the formidable Farida Begum. On Lovely’s 40th birthday, she gets the unprecedented permission to make an excursion to Gawsia Market. This is a stone flung so hard at the placid waters of a life they had been used to, that the entire system comes crashing down. Although the main action takes place in the course of a single day, the narrative weaves back and forth between past and present, switching perspectives from Lovely to Beauty to Farida Begum, peeling back the sordid layers and the dirty secrets of this strange little family, until the shocking end seems only inevitable.
Leesa Gazi manages to spin a fascinating yarn about tradition and repression, madness and desire. And not that a writer of Shabnam Nadiya's calibre requires my endorsement, but her translation somehow made me hear the cadence of the original Bangla without detracting from the enjoyment of reading it in English. A fantastic piece of work!