DIANA JUXTAPOSED
AND OTHER UNREALITIES
In this absorbing first book of stories, Salahdin Imam displays a profound imagination, one schooled by a life that has taken him across the globe, from elite educational institutions to battlefields to the world’s powerful banks. His stories effortlessly inhabit the lives and probe the secret motivations of men and women of all classes and backgrounds, characters placed by fate in difficult, and often dangerous situations.
With clear-sighted compassion his wonderfully varied hard-hitting stories explore the vagaries of the human heart, how unexpected its turns, how inconsistent its reasoning, how self-contradictory and cruel it is sometimes, and how capable of strengthening itself and triumphing despite everything.
My 5 Year Hyperlife 1966-71
Mystical Realism from Harvard Yard to Woodstock to the Bangladesh Liberation War.
I have just finished the First Draft of my forthcoming Memoir. It’s working title is My 5 Year Hyperlife 1966-71. Mystical Realism from Harvard Yard to Woodstock to the Bangladesh Liberation War. It is currently being read by a number of professional readers and a handful of friends. Based on this informed feedback I plan to prepare a Final Draft by the end of 2023, and then try to have the book published for an international audience, never an easy task.
As evident from the title the memoir covers a particularly eventful period of world history refracted through my intimate experience of its exciting, elevating and sometimes outrightly dangerous twists and turns. My greatest wish is that it will be a gripping, but also inspirational, read.
– Salahdin Imam
The Ordinary Chaos of Being Human.
Tales from Many Muslim Worlds
Anthology
This book is a collection of pieces submitted by a wide variety of people of different ages, nationalities and domiciliations who have in common only that they share a Muslim background. In this way the editor Marguerite Richards has captured a medley of voices which are charming, engaging, puzzling, revealing, tragic, hopeful and endlessly thought-provoking. The famously eclectic Muslim culture can be tasted in this collection in its modern manifestations, which means that even non-believers in Islam are represented. Given recent history many of the pieces are from war-torn Muslim countries and depict the horrors experienced by its victims. One of my pieces, titled Impassioned Elements, has been included in the collection. It recalls the story of the giant cyclone which hammered the shores of then East Pakistan in 1970 and proposes that this was not only a genuine Act of God but one which played a profound historical role. Marguerite Richards, an American settled in Sri Lanka, has done us all the favour of showing that the Muslim World of today is a truly multidimensional beating heart, impossible to pin down with stale labels.
Golden Bangladesh at 50
Contemporary Poems & Stories
Anthology
In 2021 Bangladesh celebrated its Golden Jubilee of years since independence. Among many other events to mark this anniversary it was decided to launch a volume of writing in English by a range of authors, based both in Bangladesh and from the diaspora in the United States, Europe and the Far East. The idea was to present a flavour of the 50 years of extraordinary experiences which have roiled this land, bringing it great joy as well as heartbreak. No one better than a writer to absorb all these feelings and transmute them into a work which mysteriously conveys to the reader what it means to have lived through such times. Each of these stories and poems is just such a revelation, a fix on this fleeting moment in the life of Bangladesh. Wanting to try my hand at satire (and we all know there is no end of such material in our country) I contributed a story called Tangled Web. It chronicles ups and downs in the life of a wedding matchmaker who thought of his profession strictly as a business till romantic considerations got in the way. The whole collection was put together by Shazia Omar, one of the most accomplished writers of the generation which came of age towards the end of this period.
“The major trick of writing is to intuit what the reader will find to be automatically interesting and then to be brave enough to cultivate this intuition by introducing new ways for the reader to discover interest in the text, thus ensuring that there is a transfer of original pleasure from the writer to the reader.”
– Salahdin Imam
SALAHDIN IMAM
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
With parents in the Diplomatic service Salahdin Imam (Sal) was raised all over the world. Educated primarily at Shrewsbury School, England and Harvard College ‘70 (not to mention Woodstock ’69) he returned to Bangladesh just in time for the build-up to the Liberation War, in which he was privileged to play a small role both in the field of battle and later in the accompanying public relations struggle for independence. Subsequently he went on to become an international banker, first in Bangladesh and then assignments took him to the Middle East and Europe, ending with a stint of nearly ten years in Paris, which allowed him to polish his French. He returned to Bangladesh in 1995 and has been immersed since then in the business and cultural life of the country.