In Blissful Hell-Nandita Narake

Humayun Ahmed's novel 'In Blissful Hell-Nandita Narake' grows out of a lower middle class family, with the focus remaining on Rabeya, the protagonist, who is physically grown up but mentally retarded. Rabeya's dilemma offers an interesting and convenient episode that the writer handles in a brilliant way. The novel starts with the themes of sex and adolescence, tolerance and violence, balance and ambivalence, and finally unfurls a twilight zone of complex human existence.

The translation of this novel began some twenty years back when two young students, Khurshid and Bhuiyan, made the first draft. That draft was revised and published in the Bangla Academy Journal under the name of a translator who never existed in person. The present version bears the name of its translator, who was greatly indebted to the novelist himself for going through this version and suggesting changes and corrections.

Soon after its publication, the novel claimed for its creator a place of honour in our literature. This translation, completed with the collaboration of the novelist, presents the classic work to a wider audience, capturing the depth of human existence that Humayun Ahmed explored in his early career as a student of Dhaka University.