TALK | South Asian Fiction from the Margins

Speaker: Mashiul Alam

Moderator: Daniel Elamistan

Date: March 7, Sat

Time: 2:30pm - 3:30pm

Venue: Fringe Club - Fringe Underground

Address: 2 Lower Albert Rd, Central

Price: HKD198

Language: English

Format: Talk

Description:
Mashiul Alam is one of Bangladesh’s most distinctive contemporary voices: a novelist, journalist, and master of the short story whose work blends sharp social insight with imaginative daring. Across twelve novels and novellas and eight short-story collections, Alam moves between realism, satire, and the surreal, illuminating the inequalities, dreams, and contradictions of modern South Asian life. His celebrated story Milk, winner of the 2019 Himal South Asian Short Story Prize, introduced global readers to his unsettling vision; more recently, The Meat Market and Other Stories has showcased his range in English translation. Writing at the crossroads of the political and the personal, Alam gives voice to the marginalized while revealing the absurd, tender truths beneath everyday struggle and moral complexity.

About the Speaker:

Mashiul Alam

Mashiul Alam is a Bangladeshi fiction writer and translator. His notable works include Second Night with Tanushree and The Meat Market: Ten Stories and a Novella. He translated Dostoyevsky’s Notes from Underground from Russian into Bengali. Translations of his short stories appeared in Words Without Borders, Asymptote, Aleph (Pakistan), and more. His work earned multiple accolades, including the PEN/Heim Translation Grants in 2020 (translated by Shabnam Nadiya), the Himal Southasian Short Story Competition Award (2019) and the IFIC Bank Literature Award (2020). An IWP Fall 2022 Residency participant, he is also a Civitella Ranieri Fellow (2025).

This event is presented with the support of the International Writers’ Workshop at Hong Kong Baptist University.

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ABOUT HKILF

The Hong Kong International Literary Festival (HKILF) inspires the joy of reading by bringing the world’s writers and stories to Hong Kong’s diverse communities. A dynamic year-round programme and an annual festival offer dialogue, entertainment and perspective, while the Young Readers Festival (YRF) motivates students to engage with all aspects of the written word, improving communication skills, while nurturing the art of writing and storytelling.

The annual festival features established and emerging writers from around the world, alongside local literary talents, in a programme that includes panel discussions, book talks, readings, workshops, walks, school programmes, performances, and more.

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