Writing Matters: in Conversation with Dr Mohammad A. Quayum |
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3/13/2018 Writing Matters: In conversation with Dr Mohammad A. Quayum | HOME INTERVIEWS REVIEWS FICTION POETRY ESSAYS EVENTS RESOURCES EXCERPTS E-BOOKS KITAAB BOOKSTORE KITAAB TV ABOUT US KITAAB NEWSLETTER BLOGS PUBLISHING AUTHOR OF DO YOU WRITE Writing Matters: In conversation with THE WEEK SPECULATIVE Dr Mohammad A. Quayum FICTION? March 1, 2018 by Sucharita Dutta-Asane | Leave a comment Send your story today to be considered for inclusion in 1 Vote the Best Asian Speculative Fiction 2018! By Shikhandin BOOK OF THE WEEK THE BEST ASIAN SHORT STORIES 2017 NOW AVAILABLE FOR PURCHASE! SEARCH 00:00 08:11 ARCHIVES https://kitaab.org/2018/03/01/writing-matters-in-conversation-with-dr-mohammad-a-quayum/ 1/16 3/13/2018 Writing Matters: In conversation with Dr Mohammad A. Quayum | WRITERS & Select Month FILMMAKERS – JOIN FILMWALLAS TODAY! PUBLISHED BY KITAAB 00:00 01:28 Kavitha Rao's novel, The LIKE KITAAB ON Librarian, is FACEBOOK now available at Kitaab store, Kitaab Kinokuniya, 5.5K likes Amazon and Flipkart! Order your copy Like Page today! We deliver Be the first of your friends to globally. like this Dr Mohammad A. Quayum is the author, editor and translator of 32 books in the areas of American literature, Asian Literature and Postcolonial literatures. BROUGHT He is also the author of more than sixty articles in TO YOU BY distinguished peer-reviewed journals. His research KITAAB KITAAB’S FIRST interests range from 19th and 20th century American LITERARY FESTIVAL IN INDIA literature to contemporary Asian literature, with special focus on Indian literature, Bengali literature and Malaysian-Singaporean literature. 'Dreamaginati He is the Founding Editor and Editor-in-Chief of Asiatic: on' will not An International Journal of Asian Literatures, Cultures and only entertain Englishes (indexed in Web of Science and Scopus) and is readers but also inspire on the advisory board of several leading journals FEATURED POET children to including Journal of Postcolonial Writing (Routledge, UK; write and ISI indexed), Transnational Literature (Australia; ERA chase their indexed), Interdisciplinary Literary Studies (USA; WoS dreams indexed), Journal of Postcolonial Cultures and without fear. 'Dreamaginati Follow Societies (USA), Literature Today (India), The Apollonian: A on' by Rishav Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies (India), and The Gupta is now https://kitaab.org/2018/03/01/writing-matters-in-conversation-with-dr-mohammad-a-quayum/ 2/16 3/13/2018 Writing Matters: In conversation with Dr Mohammad A. Quayum | Rupkatha Journal of the Interdisciplinary Studies of the available on Humanities (India; Scopus indexed). Flipkart.com and Kitaabstore.co Dr Quayum is dean of the Kulliyyah (Faculty) of Islamic m! Order your Revealed Knowledge and Human Sciences at copy today! International Islamic University Malaysia (IIUM), and an Honorary Professor of English and Creative Writing at Flinders University, Australia. TOP POSTS FOLLOW Call for Submission: The BLOG VIA Best Asian Short Stories EMAIL Anthology, 2018 Shikhandin: Most of us only know of you as Dr M.A. Enter your Submissions email address Asia Reborn: A Continent Quayum the academic and mentor. Tell us a bit about to follow this Rises from the Ravages of your early life, and what drew you to pursue literature. blog and receive Colonialism and War to a notifications of New Dynamism by Prasenjit Dr M.A. Quayum: I was born in a small town called new posts by K. Basu email. Reviews Gopalganj, in the district of Faridpur in Bangladesh. This Join 7,872 was before Bangladesh was formed and was still known other followers Excerpts: Lusty Indian men Enter your em for "boom boom" in as East Pakistan. I grew up in this small, near-idyllic Follow Uzbekistan town and got my early education in the only How to live & die: Government school for boys there, S.M. Model Primary Khushwant Singh's 10 rules and High School. When I was eleven, my father sent me Book Review: An Era of RSS FEEDS Darkness: The British to a public residential school several hundred FOR YOU Empire in India by Shashi kilometres away, known as Jhenidah Cadet College. This Tharoor RSS - Posts marked a turning point in my life. It was an English Essay: Tagore’s Love Affairs RSS - medium school and the fees were very high. My father Comments A Tribute to Amitav Ghosh's could hardly afford the fees and yet he sent me there, 'The Shadow Lines': The mirage of borders mainly to secure a good future for me. A second reason Poetry was that my father, who was a lawyer in Gopalganj, had PUBLISHED a great admiration for English language and literature. BY KITAAB Probably he thought that sending me there would also SUBSCRIBE TO OUR give me a good grounding in the language. I don’t know WEEKLY NEWSLETTER how and where he picked up his love for English, Subscribe to our newsletter because my grandfather was a religious teacher at a Now available primary school in our village who had little interaction at with the language. My father was, however, educated at kitaabstore.co m. Order your the Islamia College (now Maulana Azad College) in FEATURED ESSAY copy today! Calcutta (Kolkata), and perhaps it was there that he developed his great love for both English language and literature. You would be surprised to know that my father could recite several poems by Wordsworth, RECENT POSTS https://kitaab.org/2018/03/01/writing-matters-in-conversation-with-dr-mohammad-a-quayum/ 3/16 3/13/2018 Writing Matters: In conversation with Dr Mohammad A. Quayum | Keats, Tennyson and Browning from memory. He would Call for take enormous pride in reciting Keats’ “Ode to a Submission: The Best Nightingale” and Tennyson’s “Ulysses” in particular. Asian Short Maybe I was infected by his love in childhood and Stories therefore developed a natural penchant for literature Anthology, 20 from an early age, reading all kinds of books, in both Writing Matters: In Bengali and English. My father would often buy me conversation books and take me to the local library and encourage with Namita Gokh me to participate in various literary activities such as 8 best books essay writing and poetry recitation competitions. I on South- SPONSORED remember participating in an essay writing competition east Asia on the life of the Prophet when I was seven or eight Poetry: Mysteries by years old, and then being invited to read my essay at a Aparna Vince local mosque. I also remember my father giving me a Ryunosuke copy of Rabindranath Tagore’s collection of short Akutagawa: stories, Galpagucchha, for my eleventh birthday, and I Writing in the shadows RSS FEED recollect reading almost all of it in a great rush. My of Japan’s recent attempt to translate some of Rabindranath’s literary giant RSS - Posts short stories into English, which was first published as RSS - Comments Rabindranath Tagore: Selected Short Stories by Macmillan India in 2011 and then as Rabindranath Tagore: The Ruined Nest and Other Stories by Silverfish Books TAGS Malaysia in 2014, was a means to share that childhood Amazon Amitava Kumar excitement and discovery: firstly with my daughter who, Amitav Ghosh being born and brought up in Australia, has in a way Arundhati Roy Bangladesh Bihar Book lost touch with the language and the culture; secondly, with my students and friends in Malaysia and excerpts Book elsewhere, who have great curiosity about and Review books admiration for Tagore but cannot read his work in the Censorship Chetan Bhagat children's books children’s original because of the language barrier. literature China Chinese Shikhandin: Who were the authors you admired during Literature Delhi your formative years? Their influences on you, in terms Fiction Hanif Kureishi of literary taste and philosophy. Haruki Murakami history Hong Kong Dr Quayum: Like any typical Bengali child, my India Indian encounter with literature began with Bangla chhara literature Indian poetry (Bengali rhymes), rupakathar galpa (fairy tales), Indonesia Jaipur Jaipur upakatha (fables) and rupak galpa (allegories). My habit Literature was to imagine and conceptualise any poem/verse or Festival Jaipur Literature https://kitaab.org/2018/03/01/writing-matters-in-conversation-with-dr-mohammad-a-quayum/ 4/16 3/13/2018 Writing Matters: In conversation with Dr Mohammad A. Quayum | story I read. This made me not only enjoy the verse or Festival (JLF) Japan the story but also connect it to my life and Japanese literature Jeet surroundings. This habit continued as I grew up and Thayil Jhumpa Lahiri Karachi Literature Festival began to read more ‘serious’ writers such as Kashmir Kitaab Korea Korean Rabindranath, Sarat Chandra, Bibhutibhushan literature Bandopadhyay, Begum Rokeya, Tarasankar Literature Bandyopadhyay, Kazi Nazrul Islam, Jibanananda Das, literature festival Man Booker Prize Mohsin Jasimuddin, Syed Mujtaba Ali, Abdul Kadir, Manik Hamid Mo Yan Myanmar Bandopadhyay, Ashapurna Devi, Begum Sufia Kamal Nadeem Aslam Narendra Modi Nepal New book and Shawkat Osman. I think I have just given you the list of my favourite Bengali writers from childhood. All release News Nobel these writers have influenced me in one way or another Prize in Literature Novel and I have great admiration for all of them. However, if Pakistan Pakistani writer Pankaj Mishra I have to name the ones who influenced me most, it Penguin Penguin Random would have to be Rabindranath, Sarat Chandra, Rokeya, House poems poetry Nazrul and Sufia Kamal. Later I developed a great Politics publishing admiration for Mahasweta Devi, Sukanta Bhattacharya, Rabindranath Tagore Serajul Islam Choudhury, Razia Khan Amin and Salman Rushdie shashi tharoor Short Nirmalendu Goon. Both Serajul Islam Choudhury and Stories Razia Khan Amin were my professors in the English Department at the University of Dhaka. Singapore Singapore Writers Festival Speaking Tiger Sri Lanka I admire these writers in different ways, in different translation Urdu Urdu literature V.