‘The Struggle’: This impactful novel in translation presents a lived experience of agrarian unrest
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There’s an intensity to Bangladeshi writer Showkat Ali’s novel The Struggle (translated from the Bengali by V Ramaswamy and Mohiuddin Jahangir) that stayed with me well after I had finished it. Set in rural Bengal in the 1940s, the story doesn’t have any dramatic twists; instead, it builds through accumulations of hardship, small indignities, fleeting kindnesses, and most importantly, the will to endure. The result is a novel that feels both real and historically grounded without becoming didactic.
This story is about Phulmoti, a young widow navigating a world that is structured to box her in from all sides. Widowhood is not just a personal loss; it becomes a social condition that strips her of protection and rights and exposes her to scrutiny and exploitation. Her relationship with Qutubali, an unexpected ally, is one of the novel’s best parts. The novel as a whole resists easy sentimentality; what emerges is something more fragile and believable, shaped by circumstance rather than idealism.
Power dynamics
The Struggle gets its emotional and narrative depth from how personal struggle is woven into the wider socio-political fabric. This is seen in how there is a backdrop of agrarian unrest, which doesn’t outweigh Phulmoti’s story but is always present – it makes it feel real....