Syed Manzoorul Islam

Syed Manzoorul Islam is an academic, fiction writer, translator and art critic. A former professor of the University of Dhaka, he now teaches in the department of English and Humanities at the University of Liberal Arts Bangladesh. Apart from academic publications in literature and culture, he has published ten volumes of short stories and four novels. A self-translation of seventeen of his stories titled The Merman’s Prayer and Other Stories (Dhaka: Daily Star Books), came out in 2013, and his novel Ajgubi Raat, translated as Absurd Night by Pushpita Alam was published by Dhaka Translation Centre in 2019. Translations of a few of his stories have also been included in a number of anthologies of Bangladeshi short fiction.

Syed Manzoorul Islam received the Bangla Academy Award for Literature in 1996 and the Ekushey Padak, the second highest civilian award of Bangladesh, for literature in 2018. His collection of short stories, Prem O Prarthonar Golpo [Stories of Love and Prayer] was Prothom Alo's book of the year in 2005. He has also received many other awards, including Kagoj Literary Award (2006) and Brac Bank-Samakal Literary Award in 2017.