Bangladesh mourns writer and filmmaker Humayun Ahmed

DHAKA, Bangladesh – Bangladesh’s most popular fiction writer, Humayun Ahmed, died in the United States after an almost year-long battle against colon cancer, his family said July 20. He was 64.

Ahmed, also the country’s leading film director and TV drama producer, “was pronounced dead by doctors at Bellevue Hospital in New York” on Thursday, his brother Ahsan Habib told AFP.

Ahmed wrote over 200 fiction and non-fiction books, almost all of them bestsellers in Bangladesh. They often tackled the life struggles of the middle-class in lucid and easily understandable Bangla, peppered with humour.

Many have been translated to English, Japanese and Russian (among other foreign languages); these include “Gouripur Junction,” a work of fiction centred around the small town in northern Bangaldesh where Ahmed was born.

He won every top award for writing in Bangladesh in a career that also saw him make half a dozen hit films like “Aguner Poroshmoni” (The Touchstone of Fire) and “Srabon Megher Din” (Monsoon Days).

Ahmed flew to the US last September after being diagnosed with cancer during a routine check-up in Singapore, and received chemotherapy at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center.

After surgery on June 21, doctors found an unknown virus in his body and were unable to treat him, Habib said.

President Zillur Rahman joined Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina in paying tribute to Ahmed, saying his death was “an irreparable loss for Bengali literature.”

Hasina said that “Bangladesh would ever remember Humayun Ahmed for his outstanding contribution to the fields of literature, cinema and drama.”

The son of a police officer who was killed during the country’s liberation war against Pakistan in 1971, Ahmed was born in 1948 and became a chemistry professor at Dhaka University before becoming a full-time writer.

He shot to fame with his first novel “Nondito Naroke” (In Blissful Hell), published in 1972 while he studied at the university.

At the country’s largest annual publishing event — the Ekushey Book Fair — tens of thousands of fans would queue for hours for his autograph. – Agence France-Presse