Talashnama: The Quest

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. 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… 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.