Jethro Tull and His Views on Manure

While reading the list of Top 100 Ebooks downloaded from Project Gutenberg on July 4, 2026 I noticed that number 60 was  Charles Morton Aikman's Manures and the principles of manuring. In a list that begins with Moby Dick and includes classics by Dostoevsky, Shakespeare, Jane Austen, Thomas Mann, Chesterton and Sir Walter Scott, a book about manure seemed quite surprising, especially when it has reached #60 on the chart.

Jehtro Tull in 1973, the year I saw them.

So I decided to peruse its contents. Early on I found an entry about a fellow named Jethro Tull. My only connection with this name had been through the popular British rock band that emerged in the late 60's and whom I later saw at Ohio U on their Thick as a Brick Tour. 

Did the group take its name from the character in Aikman's manure compendium? As it turns out, the answer is yes. Rock band Jethro Tull took its name from the 18th-century English agronimist Jethro Tull (1674–1741), who pioneered innovations like the seed drill that helped spark the British Agricultural Revolution.

Trivia: When Ian Anderson's band was starting out they weren't that good yet so they kept changing the name of the band in order to get re-booked at places they'd already played. Someone on the staff of their booking agent, who was a historian, suggested. the name Jethro Tull at this time because it was the name they were using when they landed a Thursday night residency at London's famous Marquee Club.

The original Jethro Tull developed a theory about the importance of tilling. The more thoroughly one tilled the soil, the more luxurient the crops would be. 

He believed plant food consisted of the particles of the soil. These particles, however, had to be rendered very tiny before they become available for the plant, which would absorb them by means of its rootlets. This pulverisation of the soil goes on in nature independently of the farmer, but only very slowly, and the farmer has therefore to hasten it on by means of tillage operations. The more efficiently these operations are carried on, the more abundant will the supply.  

According to Aikman, Tull introduced and advocated the system of horse-hoe husbandry. This theory was suggested to him by the custom, which he had noticed on the Continent, of growing vines in rows, and hoeing the intervals between these rows from time to time. The excellent results which followed this mode of cultivation induced him to adopt it in England for his farm crops. 

While Tull's theory was based on principles at heart thoroughly sound, he was carried away by his personal success into drawing unwarrantable deductions. Thus he came to the conclusion that crop rotation was unnecessary, provided that a thorough system of tillage was carried out. He was also persuaded that manures could be entirely dispensed with under his new system of cultivation, for the true function of all manures is to aid in the pulverization of the soil by fermentation. We later learned this was a mistaken notion.   

Another thing Tull did was drill holes into the soil and plant at a specific depth. This approach yielded better results than the popular method called broadcasting, that is, flinging the seeds out in all directions. How interesting that today we still use this term, but apply it to media instead of farming. Of course the word still applies to seeds of a different nature. 

It strikes me that writers and farmers have more in common than we sometimes realize. Both spend much of their lives preparing the ground. The farmer tills the soil, plants carefully, and waits. The writer cultivates minds, sows ideas, and waits. Not every seed germinates. Not every field produces an abundant harvest. But every now and then an idea takes root, grows quietly beneath the surface, and changes someone's life.

Whether we're farmers, musicians, teachers, or writers, we're all in the seed-sowing business. We don't control the weather or the harvest. We simply do our best to plant something worth growing.

Jethro Tull was wrong about manure, but he was right about one thing: the condition of the soil matters. Whether we're growing wheat or wisdom, fertile ground is still where the harvest begins.

Happy 250th USA

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."

— Thomas Jefferson, Declaration of Independence (1776)

On this Independence Day, that bold promise still echoes as the beating heart of what makes America exceptional: a nation founded on timeless ideals: freedom, self-government, and the dignity of every individual. 

God bless the United States of America. 

A Note from Ayaan Hirsi Ali

"I became an American not by birth or by right, but by choice. Like many immigrants, I came to this country from a world in which I’d had no right to speak freely; no right to choose whom I would marry, or where or how I would live; no hope for the kind of life and career with which I am blessed today. I came from a culture in which my station was assigned at birth, by virtue of my sex, and could never be appealed. Looking back today, I can hardly find words to express how grateful I am, every day, to call this country my own."

Largest American flag in the world with mural of whales.

Mural and flag by Wyland, the Marine Michelangelo

All photos courtesy Gary Firstenberg, America's Photographer

Related Link

Spotlight on Wyland, the Marine Michaelangelo

Is Recycling and Waste of Time and Money?

I have been a fan of journalist John Stossel for decades. His latest video short is titled, "Even Greenpeace Says “Most Plastic Simply Cannot Be Recycled.” Here are some of his key points.

For decades we've been encouraged to recycle as though it were a moral obligation. The message has been simple: separate your trash, rinse your containers, and you're helping save the planet.

But what if the story is more complicated? Or even bunk.

John Stossel recently revisited the economics and realities of recycling, and many of his findings are surprising. While recycling aluminum, cardboard, and some paper products generally makes good economic and environmental sense, much of what Americans dutifully place in recycling bins—especially plastics—never gets recycled at all. Some ends up in landfills, some is shipped overseas, and some is ultimately burned or discarded.

Stossel also challenges long-held assumptions about landfill shortages and argues that modern landfills are far cleaner and more abundant than many people realize. His larger point isn't that we should stop caring about the environment. Rather, it is that good intentions don't automatically produce good results. Before spending billions of dollars and millions of hours pursuing any environmental policy, we ought to ask a simple question: Does it actually accomplish what we think it does?

That seems like a reasonable place to begin any honest conversation. In most cases, as Stossel's sources within the industry point out, the answer is "no."

Photo at top of page by Nick Fewings on Unsplash

501 Great Writers—and Why the Classics Still Matter

This weekend I wrote about one of my favorite reference books, Sir J. A. Hammerton's Outline of Great Books. It's a volume I've dipped into for more than forty years, ever since I rescued it from a yard sale for ten cents.

Sitting just below it on my shelf is another book that has served me equally well when I was expanding my reading of serious literature: 501 Great Writers.

Like Hammerton's masterwork, it isn't a book you read straight through. It's a book you browse. Open it almost anywhere and you'll encounter someone you've always meant to read—or someone you've never heard of but suddenly want to discover. That's one of the great pleasures of reference books. They don't simply answer questions, they create curiosity.

I've often heard people dismiss the classics as old, difficult, or irrelevant. Yet I've found the opposite to be true. The classics are the books and authors that have survived fashions, politics, literary movements, and changing tastes. Thousands of writers have faded into obscurity while Homer, Shakespeare, Cervantes, Tolstoy, Steinbeck, Dickens, Dostoevsky, and Orwell continue finding new readers. 

This doesn't happen by accident.

They continue to speak because they continue to tell us truths about ourselves and our human predicament. Technology changes. Governments rise and fall. Languages evolve. But human nature changes very little. We still love and envy. We still hope and despair. We still wrestle with pride, ambition, betrayal, forgiveness, and the search for meaning. The great writers understood this, and that's why they still feel surprisingly contemporary.

One of the unexpected benefits of books like 501 Great Writers is that it continually introduces us to authors we've somehow overlooked. Some become lifelong companions. Others simply remind us that the world of literature is much larger than my own reading history.

The structure of 501 Great Writers is different from Outline, which is primary excerpts and summaries. 501 features writer bios accompanied by their signature titles, and photos, pointings or illustrations of the authors themselves. For Robert Louis Stevenson, the first three "signature titles" listed are Treasure Island (1883), The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886), and Kidnapped (1889). He also wrote poetry and did some travel writing.

The book is useful for introducing readers to authors with whom we're often unfamiliar such as Selma Lagerlöf, the first woman to win the Noel Prize for literature. Occasionally there's a little sidebar briefly describing one of the author's most significant work. For Lagerlöf there's a callout on The Wonderful Adventures of Nils.

Every writer needs teachers. Some teach us through personal friendship. Others mentor us across centuries. I've frequently mentioned how a mentor, the late John Prin, helped jumpstart my writing career.

The value of a book like this is that it introduces us to writers who have already stood the test of time. They remind me that clarity outlasts cleverness, substance survives fashion, and honest observations about the human condition never become obsolete.

Books are conversations across generations. Every time we open a classic, we're listening to someone whose voice has refused to disappear.

* * * 

PostScript: Yesterday I wrote about Thomas Carlyle. I find it interesting that Carlyle's name didn't appear in this volume. I'm curious whether he appears in this publisher's companion volume 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die. I just took a peek at the first books listed and see that I've read nine of the first twelve. So many (great) books, so little time!

What recent book have you read that you'd like to recommend to more readers?

A Very Brief Introduction to Thomas Carlyle and 27 Thought-Provoking Quotes

Over the course of 40 years of writing, I've lost track of how many times I unearthed a pointed, pithy quote by Thomas Carlyle. Even so, I never really knew who he was. Last week I found (in a folder on my laptop) a Word doc with ten pages of quotes by Carlyle. Today I was aiming to share a portion of those, but thought maybe it's time to find out a little more who he was.  

Thomas Carlyle  (4 December 1795 – 5 February 1881) was a prominent Scottish essayist, historian, philosopher, and satirical writer. He was a major intellectual figure in the Victorian era, often called the "Sage of Chelsea" and regarded by contemporaries as the "undoubted head of English letters" and a secular prophet.

He was born in Scotland, into a strict Calvinist family, and died in London at the age of 85. Carlyle's writings influenced literature, history, and social thought with a passionate, idiosyncratic style that blended philosophy, history, and moral critique.

I only knew him for his one sentence zingers, but learned this weekend that he wrote volumes. His three-volume The French Revolution: A History has been called a "a masterpiece of historical writing." Carlyle's work directly influenced Charles Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities.

In 1841 he published a collection of his lectures On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and The Heroic in History in which he argued that great individuals (heroes) shape history. In our post-modern era, we tend to focus on their feet of clay. His six-volume bio of Friedrich II of Prussia was published in 1858-65, who must have evidently been a hero of his. 

Carlyle's satrical, philosophic novel Sartor Resartus is so strikingly original that I'm thinking of writing a blog post about it. It's full title: Sartor Resartus: The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdröckh in Three Books. The novel is a hybrid of fiction, autobiography, and social commentary. Its Latin title translates to "The Tailor Re-tailored" (or "The Tailor Patched"). The premise actually sounds hilarious. It's available at Project Gutenberg.

I was only intending to write a very brief intro to a boatload of quotes, but thought you may find him worth knowing better. Carlyle criticized the "machinery" of modern industrial society, laissez-faire economics, and what he saw as moral decay. He championed strong leadership, work ethic, and spiritual renewal. He profoundly shaped Victorian culture, with admirers including Ralph Waldo Emerson, and remains studied for his prose style and role in Romanticism-to-Victorian transitions.  

Though Carlyle is included in Hammerton's Outline of Great Books, he is not covered in 501 Great Writers, edited by Julian Patrck.

Without further adieu, a small collection of quotes from Carlyle.

Bust of Carlyle in Chelsea Library

A laugh, to be joyous, must flow from a joyous heart, for without kindness, there can be no true joy. 

A loving heart is the beginning of all knowledge. 

A man cannot make a pair of shoes rightly unless he do it in a devout manner. 

A man lives by believing something: not by debating and arguing about many things. 

 

A man willing to work, and unable to find work, is perhaps the saddest sight that fortune's inequality exhibits under this sun. 

A man without a goal is like a ship without a rudder. 

A man's felicity consists not in the outward and visible blessing of fortune, but in the inward and unseen perfections and riches of the mind. 

A person who is gifted sees the essential point and leaves the rest as surplus. 

A strong mind always hopes, and has always cause to hope. 

A well-written life is almost as rare as a well-spent one. 

Adversity is the diamond dust Heaven polishes its jewels with. 

Conviction is worthless unless it is converted into conduct. 

Do the duty which lies nearest to you, the second duty will then become clearer.  

Egotism is the source and summary of all faults and miseries. 

Every new opinion, at its starting, is precisely in a minority of one. 

Every noble work is at first impossible. 

Everywhere in life, the true question is not what we gain, but what we do. 

He who could foresee affairs three days in advance would be rich for thousands of years.  (EdNote: Especially now with Polymarket.)

I don't pretend to understand the Universe - it's a great deal bigger than I am. 

If what you have done is unjust, you have not succeeded. 

Make yourself an honest man, and then you may be sure there is one less rascal in the world. 

Men do less than they ought, unless they do all that they can. 

No pressure, no diamonds. 

Nothing builds self-esteem and self-confidence like accomplishment. 

Show me the man you honor, and I will know what kind of man you are. 

Silence is as deep as eternity; speech, shallow as time. 

The greatest university of all is a collection of books. 

* * * 

Do you find Carlyle stimulating? Leave a note in the comments.

An Outline of Great Books: The Best Ten Cents I Ever Spent

This past week I was triggered by a New York Times article titled, The Books Times Readers Are Most Excited About This Summer. The subhead reiterates. "As summer kicks off, here are the new books that our readers say they’re most eager to dive into."

When I see articles like this, my first thought is, "How many of these books will stand the test of time?" It seems to me that since there are so many truly great books from the world's great writers that most of us have never read, why not spent your summer reading a few of the great works from the past that have shaped our minds and our world? It's just so "modern" to ever be chasing "the latest shiny new toys."

The Best Ten Cents I Ever Spent

In 1982 or '83 I stopped at the yard sale of someone who was clearly educated. This was in the vicinty of Hamline Unversity in St. Paul. They were selling books by the bag, ten books for a dollar. 

One of the the books I acquired was a battered copy of the 1936 Outline of Great Books, edited by Sir J. A. Hammerton, an ambitious attempt to make the world's classic literature accessible to ordinary readers. Rather than reproducing the complete texts, it provides substantial outlines, summaries, and excerpts from approximately 250 of the Western world's most important works in history, philosophy, science, religion, poetry, biography, travel, and criticism. 

Hammerton's project was an attempt to give readers a guided tour of civilization's intellectual heritage. These were the days before television and long before the internet.

Click to enlarge

For me, it was a useful tool for broadening my education. In Sherwood Wirt's You Can Tell the World, he begins by emphasizing our need (he is addressing Christian writers, but his admonition applies to all writers) to understand the great minds and read the great books if we are aiming to influence the world. Outline of Great Books is thus a tool for becoming aware of the important players in the various scholarly disciplines. It's more than a Cliff's Notes version of the great ideas and themes of Western literature. It is comprised of excerpts from their actual writings. A person living in a small farming town might never have access to Aristotle, Dante, Gibbon, Goethe, Cervantes, or Tolstoy, but they could obtain a familiarity with their ideas and writings here.

 

What I find especially interesting is that the book no doubt inspired people to read the originals. Many families owned only a few dozen books. Outline of Great Books functioned almost like a literary map. You could read a 10–20 page condensation of a work and decide whether you wanted to pursue the full text.

The work belongs to a larger "outline" movement of the early twentieth century, alongside books like The Outline of History and other educational compendia that sought to democratize knowledge. Will and Ariel Durant released the first six volumes of The Story of Civilization around this same time, a history in more layman's terms than academic.

Outline of Great Books reflects a worldview that was common among educators of the era: An educated person should possess at least a working acquaintance with the great books that shaped Western civilization. Sadly, that assumption has largely disappeared today.

I won't deny that the book has limitations. It's focus is primarily on the great books of Western civilization, and even the section on religion omits the religions of other regions of the world. Nevertheless, it's an impressive compendium and I've pulled it off the shelf more than a few times over the years. (In fact, just two weeks ago I pulled it out to see what scientists were covered, and specifically to check out which of Sir Isaac Newton's works were cited.

It's interesting who is included and excluded in a volume such as this. Also, I'm curious if books like this will ever be published again. Everything people want can be found somewhere on the Internet now, it seems. If you can't find it, you ask Gemini, Grok, ChatGPT or some other LLM. 

What interests people today seems to be podcasts of contemporaries talking about their contemporary writing and contemporary history, so that Adam Smith, Edmund Burke, Thomas Hobbes, Carlyle, Hume, Schopenhauer, Goethe and the like are now relics. Who reads Gibbon's Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire any more? We've been told we are now living it, but what really happened in Rome 1600-1700 years ago that resulted in its downfall?

The real point I want to make, though, is how I found this gem for 10 cents. It was a treasure at a bargain price. If your eyes are open, there are probably countless overlooked treasures all around us. When it comes to books, library sales and used book stores are repositories of riches. Open your eyes.

Whispers of Grief and Independence: Nahar Trina on Toni Morrison, Flash Fiction, and Rooted Displacement

This is a Part 2 of my interview with Nahar Trina. 

On Toni Morrison's Sula
EN: You translated Toni Morrison’s novel Sula into Bengali. What drew you to this particular book, and what challenges did you face in carrying Morrison’s rich, poetic language, cultural nuances, and emotional depth from English into Bengali? How did the process of translating her work influence your own writing, especially in terms of voice, rhythm, or exploring themes like friendship, grief, and Black womanhood? 

Nahar Trina: Before translating Toni Morrison’s Sula, I was a devoted reader of her work, and I still am. By the time I began translating Sula , I had already published four translated books. Among them were two collections of children's stories featuring tales from home and abroad, and a translation of a short story collection for adults comprising works by some of the most celebrated authors in world literature. Another significant project was translating ‘Death to Life, Bangladesh’, a book by Jim McKinley based on the 1971 Liberation War of my motherland. The modest confidence I gained from translating these diverse books largely gave me the audacity to take on this particular novel by Toni Morrison.

 

Truth be told, I encountered obstacles at almost every turn while translating Sula. It is a reality that proficiency in the English language alone does not guarantee a successful literary translation. This is because language is intrinsically bound to culture. While it might be possible to break down linguistic barriers, scaling cultural walls often proves to be far more daunting. Added to this was Morrison's highly distinctive and peculiar prose style.

 

In any translation, I generally strive to prioritize the contextual essence first and then focus on the literal words. I strictly adhered to this approach for this novel as well. To readers of world literature, Toni Morrison is a deeply revered figure. She possesses a narrative style entirely her own—one that is simultaneously intricate and mesmerizing. The more adept a translator is at dissecting the spellbinding nature of Morrison's language, the more lucid the core narrative becomes in translation. Personally, I believe attempting to translate her work is an act of sheer audacity, as her writing demands immense effort. When dealing with such challenging texts, a piece of advice from Gabriel García Márquez serves as a brilliant strategy: he noted that the easiest way to truly understand a foreign book is to translate it. My desire to comprehend Morrison's writing on a deeper level, combined with my growing fascination with her work, encouraged me to display this audacity. Furthermore, I felt that introducing the readers of my native language to the creation of such a rare and monumental literary figure would be immensely enriching. This thought also fueled my courage to translate Sula.

 

Moreover, as a translator, I felt that Sula had the power to create a profound impact on Bengali readers in various ways. Although published around 1973, its appeal remains  timeless —especially for women in a society like ours, where women are still compelled to live within patriarchal structures. Here, a woman's personal freedom is often subjected to ridicule, and speaking of sexual autonomy is considered almost sacrilegious. Among the four central women in Sula, except for Nel Wright, the other three were remarkably advanced in terms of personal independence—especially Sula herself. The way Sula voiced her longing to live as an independent entity in such a hostile, prejudice-ridden era decades ago makes her journey even more deserving of recognition today. Through Sula, perhaps the seeds can be sown for readers to aspire to—not lawlessness—but a truthful, independent existence. This vision heavily influenced my decision to translate the book.

 

Another compelling reason was the novel's depiction of good versus evil. The tension between these two elements revolves around the core narrative. Yet, there is no overt attempt to explicitly label what is good or what is bad. None of the major characters bother to justify their actions or engage in rigorous self-defense. Their lives simply unfold like flowing water or the passage of time. Morrison leaves the judgment of good and evil, sin and virtue, entirely to the readers. Furthermore, it is impossible not to fall in love with the profound friendship between two individuals evolving from girlhood to womanhood that lies at the very heart of the book. The temptation to share my own profound admiration for this work with Bengali-speaking readers played a definitive role in translating Sula. Ultimately, as to how much her work has influenced me as an author, I believe that is for my readers to judge.

 

Your English-Language Debut

EN: Your recent English-language debut, Fleeting Impressions, is a collection of flash fiction exploring grief, belonging, and the quiet power of language. What inspired you to move into flash fiction for this book, and how does it connect to or differ from the stories in your Bengali collections like Studio Apartment (which won the Ekushey Book Fair award)?

 

Nahar Trina: The biggest inspiration behind writing the flash fiction pieces in Fleeting Impressions was the desire to capture the profound depth hidden within transient, momentary emotions. In this genre, the unwritten rule of “show, don't tell” deeply attracts me. This form allows the narrative of an entire lifetime to be distilled into just a few lines. A fleeting image, a sudden silence, or an unfinished sentence—each becomes as powerful as a full-length story. Due to displacement and geographical relocation, the fragmentation that seeps into life, the sudden stirrings of memory, or the soft shadows of grief—these emotions often materialize more vividly through brief, sharp, and silent prose rather than lengthy descriptions. Flash fiction has taught me to harness the power of that silence. This minimalist form has instilled a sense of discipline in me; here, the weight of every single word and the quietness of every pause matters. It feels like a distillation of emotions through language.

 

There is both a bridge and a distinction between this work and my Bengali stories. The stories in ‘Studio Apartment’, which was selected as the best short story collection in the Pencil Publications Talent Hunt Competition at the Ekushey Book Fair in 2020, are comparatively longer, character-driven, and allowed me the time to carefully craft the atmosphere. (On a side note regarding my other works, the children's story collection ‘Vindeshi Goppo’ (2023) was published after winning an award in the Ekushey Book Fair manuscript competition, and my first prose book, ‘GoddoCollage’ (2026), was published after being selected in a manuscript competition organized by Kitab-e Publications of West Bengal, India). In my Bengali books, I could seamlessly utilize the intimacy and comfort that our mother tongue naturally provides.

 

On the other hand, since English is an acquired language for me—a process that is still very much ongoing—writing in it requires a high degree of conscious effort and caution, which is never the case with Bengali. Spontaneity possesses a unique strength of its own, which is quite evident in my Bengali stories, and I am consistently striving to bring that same fluidity into my English writing. I hope readers will notice that very effort to find a rhythm within the English language in Fleeting Impressions.

Yet, a deep thread connects both books—they both attempt to explore the quiet, internal landscapes of human beings. Grief, loneliness, the tug-of-war of memories, and the experience of changing homes—all of these themes return in both languages, albeit in different forms. Alongside presenting narratives in elaborate detail, flash fiction has taught me that not all stories need to be spoken aloud; many stories can be whispered. And sometimes, it is within those whispers that the truest emotions are captured.

 

On Legacy, Bridges, and the Future

EN: Looking at your journey—from editing Golpopath to publishing in both Bengal and international platforms—what do you hope your body of work contributes to Bengali literature and to the broader South Asian diasporic conversation? What are you working on or dreaming about next?

 

Nahar Trina: My journey from editing to my own creative writing—has been a continuous process of learning and exploration. My involvement in the Bengali literary world is not just as an author; for a long time, I served as both an editor and a writer for three literary webzines: Porua, Shishukagoj, and Golpopath, (though the publications for Porua and Shishukagoj have now ceased). This experience taught me that editing is not merely about selecting texts or proofreading spellings; it is about carefully nurturing a writer's voice, clarifying their vision, and building a bridge of dialogue with the reader.

 

Conversely, my role in the English medium is different—there, I am primarily an author. When writing in English, I find that the language provides a certain necessary distance, opening up opportunities for analysis, structure, and connection with a global audience. Furthermore, working in English allows me to regularly learn from international editors. They evaluate a piece of writing based strictly on its literary merit rather than personal acquaintance, which I find immensely inspiring. When an article or story requires edits prior to publication, the warmth, sincerity, and professionalism they display not only help me grow but also leave me deeply impressed. The experience in the Bengali literary circle is often quite different, where a writer’s familiarity or personal network sometimes takes precedence over the actual quality of the text. This occasionally confronts me with ethical questions as a writer. Nevertheless, both contrasting environments have taught me invaluable lessons and have positively shaped my literary journey.

 

Flag of Bangladesh

When it comes to the broader discourse of Bengali literature and the South Asian diaspora, there are countless talented Bengali writers making significant contributions. I do not know how far my own voice will resonate in that grand space. However, as an author, my only desire is that whatever I write should serve as a harmonious bridge between these two worlds. I want the memories, the soil, the complex relationships, and the lived experiences of Bangladesh to reach global readers; at the same time, I wish for the isolation, the wordlessness, and the identity crises of diasporic life to be translated back to Bengali-speaking audiences. For me, the dialogue between these two realities is paramount.

 

Currently, I am working on a few short stories, translations, and long-form essays where the boundaries of language, memory, and identity blur into one another. My dream is to create a body of work in both Bengali and English that offers readers not just a narrative, but an immersive experience—where roots and displacement, home and exile, memory and the present moment coexist. Additionally, one of my primary goals next is to translate my debut Bengali novel, which is set against a historical backdrop, into English. There are still so many stories waiting to be penned; writing is an endless, continuous journey. My only wish is to remain on this path as long as it brings me joy.

EN: May it ever be so. Thank you, Nahar, for sharing your story.

 

Read Nahar Trina's A Shoreless Abyss.