Nadeem Zaman’s new novel takes ‘The Great Gatsby’ to Dhaka

Bangladeshi author Nadeem Zaman's latest novel, The Inheritors, is inspired by F Scott Fitzgerald's Jazz Age novel, The Great Gatsby (1925). 

Due to be published by Hachette India in early 2023 and meant to be circulated exclusively in South Asia, the novel is "a story of passion, decadence, infidelity, privilege, identity, and the many confounding faces of love and loss in contemporary Dhaka", Zaman shared on his social media. 

Fitzgerald's classic novel has at its heart an unfulfilled love story, but it became known as The Great American novel for its exploration of ambition, nostalgia, and memory in a new America versus the old. 

Nadeem Zaman's novel seems concerned with similar themes. Its protagonist Nisar Chowdhury returns to his homeland Dhaka from Chicago—a city where the author himself grew up—and upon his return, finds his memory of Dhaka at odds with reality. 

"This novel explores what it means to live in a world where power and privilege can afford to sustain relationships veneered by half-truths", the book's blurb states. 

Born in Bangladesh and having grown up in Dhaka and Chicago, Nadeem Zaman has PhD in Comparative Humanities and Literature from the University of Louisville. He teaches English at St. Mary's College of Maryland.

He has previously written the novel, In The Time of the Others (Picador India, 2018) and short story collections, Up in the Main House & Other Stories (Unnamed Press 2019) and Days and Nights in the City (Bengal Lights Books, 2019). His fiction has also appeared in Star Literature, The Louisville Review, Singapore Unbound, Dhaka Tribune, and other platforms.