Speaker: Prof Dr MA Quayum
(of the International Islamic University Malaysia)Venue: Silverfish Books, 28-1, Jalan Telawi, Bangsar Baru, 59100 Kuala Lumpur
Date and Time: Saturday, 3 May, 2014 at 5.30 pm
Admission is free.
The book, The Ruined Nest and other stories was planned to be released in 2013, 100 years after Rabindranath Tagore's Nobel Prize for Literature in 1913. But Prof Quayum, the perfectionist that he is, decided it would be better to publish a good book late than rush one out that we're not fully satisfied. This is in full agreement with the ethos of Silverfish Books. The date for the book event was not picked accidentally, as the 153rd anniversary of Tagore's birthday would fall on 7 May, 2014.
After reading just one of the 20 short stories (the title story is actually a novella), we were convinced that this was not the work of a journeyman translator but by a master and a lifelong scholar of the works of Rabindranath Tagore. Add this to the fact that Prof Quayum is a native Bengali speaker and a professor of English, and we have a work that can only be described as beautiful. Although universally acknowledged for his poems, and dubbed gurudev (master teacher), kabiguru (master poet) and bishwaskabi (world poet), Tagore was a master of the short story form in Bengali, having written 95 and compared favourably to Anton Chekhov and Guy de Maupassant.
Praise for Prof Quayum from The Daily Star, Bangladesh. (There are literally dozens of them, but this is one we like).
In any translation it is very difficult to keep intact the sense of each context. Quayum’s translation is as close as one can get: clear, contemporary and accessible to a modern English-reading global audience. It is not handicapped by the ignorance of the translator of certain delicate nuances of the Bengali language, especially in the context of intimate household expressions. There is commendable fidelity and honesty in Quayum’s translation. It once again opens up the possibility of discovering a relevance of Tagore's creations more than a century after they were composed…. Without hesitation I recommend Professor Quayum’s volume as an authoritative and eminently readable translation, an essential Tagore for collectors. It should find a place on every discerning reader’s shelf.
About the author
Mohammad A. Quayum is professor of English at International Islamic University Malaysia, and Adjunct of Professor in the School of Humanities, at Flinders University, Australia. He has previously taught at universities in Bangladesh, Singapore and the United States. Quayum is the author, editor or translator of 27 books far too numerous to be listed here. His essays on American and Postcolonial Literatures have appeared in prominent literary journals in Australia, Canada, India, Malaysia, Singapore, South Africa, Taiwan, the UK and the USA. Quayum is a leading literary scholar in South and Southeast Asia. He is the Founding Editor and Editor-in-Chief of Asiatic: IIUM Journal of English Language and Literature, and is on the Advisory Board of several distinguished literary journal around the world.
