This much we learn right at the start from the novel’s narrator, who like many others, is intrigued by Babu’s story and hungry for answers.Ĭhoudhury (who passed away just before his book was published) structures the entire novel as a biography of sorts in which the narrator attempts a ‘literary recreation’ of Babu’s life and times. The saga ends abruptly in 2021, when this ‘Rasputin-like antihero’ mysteriously vanishes-from centre stage and planet earth, leaving a whole lot of unanswered questions in his wake. They gladly place their ‘hopes, their dreams’ in him. In his prime, the spotlight shines relentlessly on Babu, both in his home country as well as globally. BABU ABDUL MAJUMDAR, popularly known as Babu Bangladesh or Babu, the fictional figure around whom Numair Choudhury’s debut novel revolves, is remembered as a charismatic politician and environmentalist, writer, visionary and ‘something of a mystic’.
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