MEMORIAL CLUB
by Mozid Mahmud
ISBN: 978-1-958652-16-9
eISBN: 978-1-958652-15-2
$19.00 / Paperback / 5.5” x 8.5” / 138 pages
Gaudy Boy, January 2025
N. America: Asterism / Bookshop / Amazon
Distributed by Asterism & Ingram

“Magnificent and multilayered novel . . . a precious literary experience.”
—Alam Khorshed, winner of the Bangla Academy Literary Award 2022

One man’s wrongful detention leads to a meditation on power, perversion, and paternity.

About

Hasan is a young journalist in Dhaka, disillusioned about his job, dissatisfied with his pregnant wife, and yearning for his independent-minded colleague, Bilu. One fateful night, he stumbles into a hapless, embarrassing situation that turns his life upside down. At the mercy of an unforgiving society for a crime he did not commit, Hasan is haunted anew by memories of other victims of injustice he has known. Meanwhile, Bilu struggles too against insidious forms of patriarchal expectations and control that hold her back from expressing her full self.

Memorial Club immerses us in the worlds of Hasan and Bilu as they navigate class frictions, gender discrimination, and sexual assault, creating a vivid, complex portrait of Bangladeshi society. The novel carries us from the crowded streets of the capital city of Dhaka to the luminous mustard fields of Hasan's childhood village. This life-changing journey invokes the lessons of the Mahabharata and the poetry of Rabindranath Tagore. Written by one of Bangladesh’s most reputed writers, Memorial Club is an intoxicating meditation on desire, dreams, and the limits of justice.

Author

Mozid Mahmud is a poet, essayist and novelist based in Dhaka, Bangladesh. Born in Pabna and educated at the University of Dhaka, he is recognized as a major Bangladeshi poet of the 1980s. He is the author of more than fifty titles, some of which include Mahfuzamongol (1989), Toward the Pasture (1995), The Birth of the Maternity Clinic (2006) and Rabindranath’s Travelogues (2010). He worked as a journalist for various dailies and news organizations before setting up his own nonprofit organization to work for social advancement causes. A noted scholar on Kazi Nazrul Islam, he was awarded the Rabindra-Nazrul Literary Prize in 2006, the National Press Club Award in 2008 and the Bengali Writers’ Honors in London in 2010. Recently, his fiction and essays have appeared in Singapore Unbound, Provenance Journal, Indian Quarterly, Borderless and adda. Many of his works have been translated into English, Chinese, Hindi and French. Memorial Club is his debut novel.

Praise

“Steeped in memory, magic and meditation, this exploration into human ethos and existence leaves us wondering about the true meaning of life, longing, and love. Reading this magnificent and multilayered novel is a precious literary experience—highly recommended!”
—Alam Khorshed, winner of the Bangla Academy Literary Award 2022

“A fascinating novel about private lives threatened and even shortened because of the societal boundaries imposed on sexuality. Drawing on his considerable experience as a journalist and commitment to social advancement, Mozid Mahmud gives us a captivating story about Bangladeshi men and women dealing with traditional pressure and restrictions, particularly those who become entangled in the nets of prejudice and disapproval.”
—Fakrul Alam, Professor (retired), Department of English, University of Dhaka

“Memorial Club presents a Bengali epic in the form of a short novel. Reading this book offers a surreal experience—a richly layered journey through love, history, politics, myths, and religious traditions. Mahmud’s sensuous prose, coupled with his quiet storytelling, transports readers to a world that remains largely unfamiliar to Western audiences.”
—Rahad Abir, author of Bengal Hound and winner of the Georgia Author of the Year Award