Fireflies in the Mist
SynopsisPlot
Fireflies follows the creation of modern-day Bangladesh ― from Indian province to Partition, to the emergence of statehood ― as told through the impassioned voice of Deepali Sarkar and others around her who live through turbulence. Hyder perceptively and majestically follows the trajectory of Sarkar’s life ― from her secluded upbringing in Dhaka to becoming a socialist rebel and to her ultimate transformation as a diasporic Bengali cosmopolitan ― in the way that many of yesterday’s revolutionaries are slowly but surely ensnared within a net of class and luxury dangled in front of them.
Story
About this book
Fireflies in the Mist follows Deepali Sarkar from her sheltered childhood in Dhaka through decades of political upheaval in Bengal. Sarkar grows into a socialist activist during a period that spans the 1947 Partition of British India, the separation of East Pakistan, and the eventual formation of Bangladesh. The novel tracks her alongside other characters whose lives are shaped by the same historical forces, each responding differently to the pressures of nationalism, class, and displacement.
Qurratulain Hyder, one of the major Urdu-language novelists of the twentieth century, uses Sarkar's arc to examine how revolutionary ideals shift over time. As Sarkar moves from provincial Dhaka into a wider cosmopolitan world, the book traces a pattern familiar in postcolonial settings: early conviction giving way to comfort, and political energy gradually absorbed by class privilege. The story does not treat this as simple failure but as a slow, layered process tied to the social structures around each character.
The novel's geographic scope connects several cities and borders that were redrawn within a single generation. Hyder wrote in both Urdu and English, and this edition brings the novel to English-language readers through her own careful rendering of a landscape she knew from multiple directions.
