Memorial Club

One man's wrongful detention leads to a meditation on power, perversion, and paternity.Hasan is a young journalist in Dhaka, disillusioned about his job, dissatisfied with his pregnant wife, and yearning for his independent-minded colleague, Bilu. One fateful night, he stumbles into a hapless, embarrassing situation that turns his life upside down. At the mercy of an unforgiving society for a crime he did not commit, Hasan is haunted anew by memories of other victims of injustice he has known. Meanwhile, Bilu struggles too against insidious forms of patriarchal expectations and control that hold her back from expressing her full self.Told in a meandering, poetic voice, Memorial Club immerses us in the worlds of Hasan and Bilu, creating a vivid, complex portrait of Bangladeshi society. The novel takes a hard look at social ills such as gender discrimination, class frictions, and sexual assault. Yet it is at times also nostalgic and lyrical, bearing us from the crowded streets of the capital city to the luminous mustard fields of Hasan's childhood village, while invoking the lessons of the Mahabharata and the poetry of Rabindranath Tagore. Written by one of Bangladesh's most reputed writers, this novel is an intoxicating meditation on desire, dreams, and the limits of justice.