Homegrown heroine

Over the past ten years or so, a confluence of factors such as the rise of social media 'societies' like Bookstagram and Booktok, and the popularity of events like the Dhaka Lit Fest, have created ideal conditions for Bangladeshi writers writing in English to publish, share and sell their work in an unprecedented way. This has allowed for a whole slew of bold, fresh material to arise from this region, across all genres, challenging existing notions of what Bangladeshi literature should look like.

The return of the DLF allowed me to discover a bunch of these voices, and Anjum N Choudhury's The Divining Thread was one such treasure. It is a tiny novella that unfolds like one of those enchanting papercraft dioramas. Zarene is the daughter of a wealthy merchant, betrothed to a prince. On her way to her wedding, she spots a village girl wearing the most exquisite ghagra. Zarene, who has something of an obsession with handloom fabrics, is so enchanted by the outfit that it costs her her marriage, and sets her out on a journey filled with adventures, discoveries and self-realisation.

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"The thing about fairy tales is that they're all about morality," Anjum has said of her inspiration for The Divining Thread, continuing, "One trope kept popping up that really bothered me—the self-sacrificing girl is virtuous and thus deserves the prince, while the materialistic girl who likes nice things does not deserve the prince. Meanwhile, nobody is holding the prince accountable."

And so, this story, which originally began as a short story, features a headstrong heroine putting her desires above what society expects of her, in order to realise her destiny. And no one is letting any princes off the hook either!  While there are some familiar tropes, the story itself will take you to unexpected places. You look at the size of the book and expect Disney's Frozen, and end up with something closer to Brandon Sanderson's Mistborn books, but South Asian. Anjum Chowdhury has lived in Dhaka, Delhi and Kathmandu, and she weaves cultural and folkloric elements of each place into the fabric of the narrative to create a truly original fantasy setting, and I for one, cannot wait to see what she does next.

The Divining Thread is available at Batighar and Bookworm.

Sabrina Fatma Ahmad is an author and journalist. She is the founder of the annual Sehri Tales challenge.