Saneh Sangsuk

The Meat Market by Mashiul Alam, translated from the Bengali by Shabnam Nadiya, Eka Westland, 2024 From its first story, The Meat Market amply indicates the weirdness that awaits readers. Written by Mashiul Alam, who was born and brought up in northern Bangladesh, this collection brings together short fiction originally written in Bengali, translated into English by Shabnam Nadiya, who continues to prove her skill.

Sangsuk’s latest novel is part parable, part paean to the ‘forest ethics’ and natural world of the author’s youth The ninety-three-year-old protagonist of The Understory is both a raconteur and a Buddhist abbot. Its opening pages introduce us to Luang Paw Tien and his talent for spinning yarn after yarn – as well as the ambivalence with which the inhabitants of Praeknamdang, a Thai village from a bygone past teetering on the precipice of modernisation, treat both storytellers and monks.

From Deep Vellum | The Understory by Saneh Sangsuk, translated from the Thai by Mui Poopoksakul | Fiction | 196 pages | ISBN 9781646052752 | US$17.95 What the publisher says: “The lovable, yarn-spinning monk Luang Paw Tien, now in his nineties, is the last person in his village to bear witness to the power and plenitude of the jungle before agrarian and then capitalist life took over his community.