Short Stories

This book is for the world to rediscover the souls of the children who are not treated as children. It’s for the world to see the truth so that the next time each person comes across a street child like the ones in these stories—they’ll feel something, feel something enough to yearn to fight for what’s right and try to change these children’s fates.

Fault Lines is the first anthology containing stories from Bangladesh, Pakistan, India, the United States and the United Kingdom on the theme of 1971. It obliges readers from the subcontinent to ask pertinent questions about their own history. What was a Pakistani soldier thinking when he was ordered to shoot unarmed women and children? How do women who fare worst in times of turmoil and tyranny cope when they become helpless victims of atrocities? Were all Bengalis brave? Were all army men evil?

The characters of Nasreen Jahan’s stories are social misfits and discards, people who rarely attract attention because they are not charming or sophisticated, people whose stories are rarely told. Thus an old man rises from his grave to hunt down his wife’s killer; a cripple, mocked by everyone, tries to prove his virility; a cattle thief finds himself in rivalry with vultures.

An old writer who has received all the literary prizes his country has to offer, a widow who receives a condolence letter from her late husband's club, a grandmother who makes a kantha for her grandchild, a newspaper employee who falls in love with her co-worker, a sculptor who makes a statue of a political leader, a forensic doctor whose late husband saved a four-anna coin, a young woman who combs all her hair over one ear, three friends who knew each other as adolescents - what do they have in common?