A pīr [a Muslim holy man] speaking in bookish Bangla, a man towing his boat upstream till his death, a tunnel underneath the bedroom of a young woman to be married soon, and a judge sleeping as a young woman stands trial for the charge of murdering her own child: these are indelible images from Syed Waliullah’s Bahipīr [The Bookish Pīr] (1960), Ujāne Mŗtyu [Death Upstream] (1963), Sudanga [Tunnel] (1964) and Tarangabhanga [Broken Waves] (1964). At a time when modern theatre in East Pakistan was, by and large, a provincial backwater where inconsequential social melodramas were produced by amateur clubs, Syed Waliullah appeared as though from nowhere, to lead a select group of three n…

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Citation: Ahmed, Syed Jamil. "Plays". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 29 August 2020 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=39301, accessed 28 March 2024.]

39301 Plays 3 Historical context notes are intended to give basic and preliminary information on a topic. In some cases they will be expanded into longer entries as the Literary Encyclopedia evolves.

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