Hossain, Saad Z
Entry updated 14 March 2022. Tagged: Author.
(? - ) Bangladeshi author whose first novel, Baghdad Immortals (2013; vt Escape from Baghdad! 2015), treats the world of Iraq after the fall of Saddam Hussein as a surreal nightmare (see Imperialism; Satire; War); the tale traces the appalled and appalling "antics" of its two protagonists as they attempt to smuggle a torturer out of the land he has helped destroy. It is possible to detect Time Distortions as the hegira continues into darkness. Djinn City (2017) is a fantasy set in an AI-governed incorporated Dhaka crosshatched with the world of djinns, whose vengeful emissaries interpenetratingly invade Bangladesh [for Crosshatch see The Encyclopedia of Fantasy under links below]. The Gurkha and the Lord of Tuesday (2019) moves into Near Future Kathmandu in a tale whose dizzyingly Equipoisal twists and turns, from sf into fantasy-world djinns, again exposes a treatment of genres (see Fantastika) as indefinitely manipulable. The novel opens a series that continues with Kundu Wakes Up (2022).
Within Hossain's work, the SF Megatext is a fruitful aberration, with a tale like Cyber Mage (2021) engagingly Equipoisal in its massaging of material from earlier work – AIs with "personality" cluster again here – and newer topoi, like Videogames: there is a considerable amount of plot, much of it joyful. [JC]
Saad Z Hossain
born Dhaka, Bangladesh.
works
series
The Gurkha and the Lord of Tuesday
- The Gurkha and the Lord of Tuesday (New York: Tor.com, 2019) [The Gurkha and the Lord of Tuesday: pb/Eric Nyquist]
- Kundu Wakes Up (New York: Tor.com, 2022) [The Gurkha and the Lord of Tuesday: pb/]
individual titles
- Baghdad Immortals (Dhaka, Bangladesh: Bengal Publications, 2013) [pb/]
- Escape from Baghdad! (New Delhi, India: Aleph Book Company, 2015) [vt of the above: pb/]
- Djinn City (New Delhi, India: Aleph Book Company, 2017) [pb/Brendan Monroe]
- The Gurkha and the Lord of Tuesday (New York: Tor.com, 2019) [pb/Eric Nyquist]
- Cyber Mage (Los Angeles, California: Unnamed Press, 2021) [pb/]
links
previous versions of this entry