Why there are no Noyontara Flowers in Agargaon Colony – Book Review

Why there are no Noyontara Flowers in Agaragaon Colony is a translated work from Bengali by Shahidul Zahir. It is a collection of short stories.

I appreciated quite a lot of stories but I cannot say that I was awed by the book in its entirety. The description of the setting is quiet vivid, but I think due to disconnect with the locale where these stories belong to, I could not connect very well to the same.

While some stories grasped my attention, there were some I just could not make sense of. Also lately I have seen that even though its is the positive part of a short story that it concludes quickly, it also tends to be the reason you do not come back to the book sooner.

Also the stories semed like a drag to me, maybe the style of writing and story telling was something I failed to connect to.

I really like the story “Breeze of the Dolu river” and “The Chronicles of mohammed Selim’s life”. Even though here as well I could not connect much with the characters or the places, I enjoyed reading these.

The story Why there are no Noyontara Flowers is also interesting, though also quiet weird at the same time. Though the one that was most bewildering was the fig – eating folk.

Our Bakul, The thorn and The woodcutter and the Ravens were some other interesting stories. These stories did hold my attention but then coming back to another difficult to read story sometimes seemed like a lot of work to me and hence I ended up slowing down a lot with this book.

Also with the perplexing stories, I would not find it easy to jump from one story right into the next one.

It was an interesting glimpse perhaps into another world. Not the kind of book that I would pick on a dull weekend as for me it entailed a little more immersive reading.

You may buy the book here. Do check it out and read if it is something that compels you. I would love to hear what you thought of it!

This post is a part of the Blogchatter Review program.