Song of a Reformed Headhunter

Weekly column written for the Singapore Unbound newsletter. Sign up here .  Congratulations to  Rahad Abir  for winning the Georgia Author of the Year Award for literary fiction! We're so proud of you! Past winners include Malcolm Tariq, Ruby Lal, and Natasha Trethewey. The award citation reads: " Bengal Hound  is authentic and complex, and the storytelling skills on display here are impressive. At times the narrative becomes tight and abrupt, a mirror of what is happening with the protagonist. Overall, this is a vividly imagined, smartly edited novel. " At its very core a story of love and loss,  Bengal Hound  traces the turbulent years of East Pakistan that led to a mass revolution, eventually culminating in the creation of Bangladesh. Rahad Abir conjures up characters haunted by memory and trauma in a society reeling from the pains of the Partition of British India. A powerful exploration of the dynamics of nationalism, family, religion, and gender relat...

 Weekly column written for the Singapore Unbound newsletter. Sign up here . The SUSPECT editorial team has heard that a reader of our journal was horrified by the depiction of child rape and marriage in the story  "Beauty and the Jinn"  by Rahad Abir. The reaction was not unexpected, but nevertheless we're glad to have this opportunity to explain our editorial stance and share some of our internal discussions, which are still evolving.  Rahad Abir's story "The Beauty and the Jinn" is very realistic in depicting child rape and marriage for the purpose of exposing what is prevalent in his native Bangladesh, as Rahad's audio recording at the end of the story explains. The story's realism is intended to provoke moral disgust and outrage over what is often normalized or silenced in the country, and, as one editor reminded us, elsewhere in South and Southeast Asia. Another editor added, "As it stands, the story makes clear two things—the devastating i...