The Search

Twenty-five long years after the war that was supposed to liberate Bangladesh—and that instead, for far too many people, merely brought fear, violence, and loss—a young researcher arrives on the doorstep of one survivor in Dhaka, Mariam, armed with a set of questions that have no easy answers. How did Mariam and women like her—who lived through violence and rape—survive the war? How did the Pakistani army deal with women they found in homes, offices, or colleges? Why did Mariam send her brother away to keep him safe even as she stayed on? For Mariam, however, these questions are irrelevant—her demons are different. Could she have saved her brother, she wonders? And what happened to the other men in her life? What did the war do to them, and to her?

A powerful novel of shattering war and its aftermath, The Search tells of the difficulty of picking up the pieces and moving on after personal—and national—trauma.

Shaheen Akhtar is a novelist and short story writer who has compiled and edited anthologies of women’s writings in Bengali. She works with Ain-O-Salish Kendra, a Dhaka-based human rights organization. Ella Dutta is a writer, journalist and translator.
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