02/10/2026
The Department of English and Humanities, BRAC University cordially invites you all to an event titled "Literature and Crisis: Dilruba Z. Ara in conversation with Sabiha Huq", to be held on 15th October 2026 from 3pm to 5pm at Club Activity Room-1 (Level 6), BRAC University, Merul Badda Campus.
In this conversation between Ms. Dilruba Z. Ara and Professor Dr. Sabiha Huq of the Department of English and Humanities of BRAC University, we will have insights into how literature is born in times of crisis, alongside the current crises in literature and literary studies.
Our guest speaker Dilruba Z. Ara is a Swedish Bangladeshi novelist, short-story writer, poet, painter, and translator whose work explores structural power, historical trauma, cultural memory, displacement, and human dignity in times of crisis.
Born in Dhaka, she was introduced to world literature and mythology from an early age by her father, the renowned Bangladeshi author and translator Shahed Ali. Her debut novel, A List of Offences, received international recognition and reached the top-ten bestseller charts in South America alongside The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini. Published in several languages, including Spanish, Greek and Swedish, the novel has been reviewed and taught internationally, including at universities in Europe, Latin America and North America.
Her short-story collection Detached Belonging has attracted significant academic interest. The titular story of the volume has been translated into Arabic and incorporated into university English-literature curricula across Europe, North America, and the Middle East. Her recent story, The Sacrificial Animal, examines the pandemic through questions of architecture, class, power, and vulnerability.
Her critically acclaimed novel Blame has generated substantial international scholarly engagement, particularly in research on war, gender, memory, trauma, nationalism, and the experiences of women following the 1971 Bangladesh Liberation War.
Some of her poems are anthologised, and some are studied as part of a World Literature course at Sharjah University.
Ara holds degrees in English, Swedish, Linguistics, Classical Arabic and Pedagogy from the University of Gothenburg and Lund University.
