The third and final day of the Dhaka Lit Fest opened with a session titled “Pop Fiction,” featuring Srabonti Narmeen Ali, Nesar Nadim, and Khondokar Ashif Uz Zaman, in a lively conversation with best-selling novelist Nirupama Subramanian. It was about the rise and rise of popular fiction (in English) in the country, and the ways and means the authors of pop fiction are using to get their work out there.
Nirupama Subramanian is the author of two best-selling novels Keep the Change (2010) and Intermission (2012).
Srabonti Narmeen Ali, whose debut novel Hope in Technicolor was released two years ago, elaborated on her use of social media to create a following for her work.
British-Bangladeshi author Nesar Nadim’s book Demons, which is believed to be the first horror pop fiction novel in English published in Bangladesh, shared his experiences, which included publishing the novel in e-book format back in March this year before it came out on print this month.
Khondokar Ashif Uz Zaman’s first novel Faded was launched this year by Bengal Publications at the DLF.
The authors, in addition to discussing the role of social media and e-publishing to break into the industry, particularly in the case of short stories, also talked about how pop fiction by local authors have slowly caught up to their international counterparts, and can now hold their own among today’s readers.
