Noble venture
Bangladeshi Novels go cyberway
Harun ur Rashid
The literature of the country has gone on the net! Not the literary pieces themselves, but essays and discussions about them; not all the literary genres, only the novels. Yet litterateurs and intellectuals believe that this has been a milestone in the field of literary culture of the country. A website named www. bangladeshinovels.com was officially launched on October 02 at a ceremony held at the auditorium of the Institute of Modern Languages of Dhaka University. Authored and hosted by Subrata Kumar Das a teacher of English at Bangladesh Rifle College- out of sheer personal interest, the website carries discussions on more than 30 novelists and their work. The site has three pages that contain this information. The introduction page has a list of all the major novelists and their novels. The article section contains essays, all written by Subrata Kumar Das, on 32 novelists. Another link of the site leads to short Bios that record the time period of all Bangladeshi novelists, their novels and awards won by them. An appendix page called 'others' contains information about the two English novels written by two Bangladeshi novelists. All the pages have very artistic looks that will immediately win the visitors' praise. Presided over by Professor Sirajul Islam Chowdhury, the launching ceremony was also attended by Professor Monsur Musa, DG, Bangla Academy, eminent littérateur Mohammad Zafar Iqbal, Fakrul Alam, Professor of English, Dhaka University, and Masuduzzaman. A number of novelists including Moinul Ahsan Saber, Imdadul Haque Milon, Nurul Huda, Rabeya Khatun, Abu Bakkar Siddiqui and others were also present at the event. Speakers unanimously opined that such endeavours like Subrata's would help Bangladeshi literature reach the foreign readers and researchers. Novelists Moinul Ahsan Saber said, that now the world would discover that our literature is also classic in nature. Zafar Iqbal emphasised on maintaining international standards regarding translation of Bangla novels so that the readers of other languages get a similar feeling that is projected in the original Bangla version. Professor Fakrul Alam advised Subrata on creating links for cross-reference. He also pointed out the necessity of updating the database on a regular basis. Site-author Subrata is hopeful about updating the site every three months and thus including many other important novelists into the list.
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