Ismail Darbesh was born in an ostagar or traditional garment-maker family, and completed his schooling at Tentulkuli High School and Makardaha Bamasundari Institution, after which he attended Narsingha Dutta College in Howrah and graduated with Honours in Bengali. He began writing stories, essays, features and sketches for little magazines from the time he was in college, but discontinued thereafter. From 2016, after getting a smartphone, he began writing again, this time on Facebook. His collection of short stories, Kangshobodher Nepothye (Behind the Scenes of Kamsa's Vanquishment) was published in 2020 by Abhijan, Kolkata. Talashnama, his first novel ±which also began as a series of posts on Facebook ±was published by Abhijan in 2021. His second novel, Raanridighir Brittanto (Tales from Raanridighi), will be published later this year.
<p>Set in Sadnahati, a Muslim-majority village in West Bengal, Talashnama is the story of Riziya, an educated and headstrong woman with an anguished past.</p><p>Hounded by a devastating secret, Riziya elopes with her tutor, Suman Nath, a Hindu, although it is Tahirul - the local Imam torn between duty and desire - who is her true love. On the day she leaves, she allegedly writes anti-Islamic graffiti on the wall of the village mosque - an incident that both baffles and enrages the villagers. Ten years later, Suman Nath takes his own life, and Riziya must return to a Sadnahati fraught with disapproval and condemnation...</p><p>Ismail Darbesh's debut novel, Talashnama, is a thrilling literary tour de force, where love, religion, modernity and politics collide. A bestseller in the original Bangla and translated brilliantly by V. Ramaswamy, it is also an evocative inquiry into the uncertainties and challenges of being Muslim in today's India.</p>
