Literary treasures at foreign cultural centre libraries in Dhaka

"When my family first came to Bangladesh in 1972, the USIS library was on the corner of Topkhana Road… I have a dim memory of a cavernous, high-ceilinged place where sunlight from big windows fell on the ranks of newspapers to the side. Real wood, generous shelves, a hushed air. But before I could get to know it, Nixon bombed Haiphong harbour (remember the Vietnam War?), and students promptly marched to the USIS and set fire to a few chairs."

"The police fired on the demonstrators, and free, independent Bangladesh's first civil protest deaths occurred. In the ensuing shock and furore, the Topkhana Road library closed its doors, never to open them again," reminisces Khademul Islam in The Daily Star Book of Bangladeshi Writings (2006).

US Information Service (USIS) used to patronise the publication of books on the US and Bengali translation works of American literature. Instances of these can still be traced in the public library of the Press Institute of Bangladesh (PIB), such as Walter D Edmonds' Drums Along the Mohawk (1936) and another one by Pulitzer Prize winning AB Guthrie Junior and were published under Bengali titles of Mohawk Nodir Banke and Adiganta in succession. Both were translated by journalist Sanaullah Noori.

Another one propagating US ideology was Zbigniew Brzeziński's The Grand Failure: The Birth and Death of Communism in the Twentieth Century (1994). Khoshroz Kitab Mahal, a once-grand name in the Bangladeshi book publishing industry, has reprinted these three titles, however, in a less attractive font. Unfortunately, the American cultural centre didn't continue the collaborative publishing enterprises.

Today, USIS rests at Notun Bazar, opposite the US Embassy, and renamed as American Center, and the library there is named Archer K Blood Library. In 2012, another such centre was formed, the Edward M Kennedy Center, popularly known by its abbreviation for EMK Center. By registering for the Archer K Blood Library at 800 Tk per two years, one can exploit the abundant resources in both centres. The one at Notun Bazar has its library divided into an EducationUSA section and a general one. There are books, magazines, DVDs, and audiobooks in the general section.

'10,000 members have registered so far, but few are active," said Bimol Nokrek, a librarian. There is a wide range of genres of books in the collection. Saul Bellow's (who was a dear colleague of Syed Shamsul Haq at BBC London) Dangling Man, Edward W Said's Reflections on Exile, Paula Hawkins' The Girl on The Train, Maya Angelou's The Heart of a Woman, Leslie Gourse's Deep Down in Music, Collected Stories of Issac Bashevis Singer, Jazz by Toni Morrison, Steve Jobs by Walter Issacson, Bengali Harlem by Vivek Bald, The Culture of Fear by Barry Glassner, The Sixth Extinction by Elizabeth Kolbert, Tube by Andrew Blum, Transgender 101 by Nicholas Teich, Why People Photograph by Robert Adams are just few to name.

There are also rich American literature books and books on American culture, politics and policies. Books of this encompass include Poems by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Rap Music and the Poetics of Identity by Adam Krims, Canoeing in the Wilderness by Henry David Thoreau, Excursions: The Writings of Henry D. Thoreau edited by Joseph Moldenhauer, American Short Stories since 1945, The Collected Tales and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe, Rise of the Rocket Girls by Nathalia Holt, As I Lay Dying by William Falkner, Jackie Kennedy: A Life in Pictures, Writings and Drawings of John James Audubon, A Century of Subways, American Rifle, American Indian Food, Anti-intellectualism in American Life, Reinventing the Enemy's Language, Jimmy Carter's Our Endangered Values etc.

One might happen across older crops of American authors in charming volumes of the Library of America. There are magazines stacked in a stand, such as Fortune, National Geographic, Time, Smithsonian, The New Yorker, The Atlantic, All About Space and a few others. DVDs include The Godfather, Reconstructing Creole, Martin Luther King's 'I Have a Dream', Children of Heaven, Life Beyond Earth, Dead Poets Society, Interstellar, Galileo's Battle for the Heavens, etc.

The EducationUSA section offers books and booklets that might be useful and, at times, vital to ace the US entrance exams and getting into various programs. Books in this room include A PhD is Not Enough, 1001 Ways to Pay for College, Résumé Magic: Trade Secrets of a Professional Résumé Writer by Susan Whitcomb, Peterson's Graduate Programs in Engineering & Applied Sciences, and other usual GMAT, GRE, SAT, TOEFL, and IELTS books.

Compared to Archer K Blood Library, EMK Center, recently relocated from Dhanmondi, has a smaller collection of books and magazines. The 30-volume Encylopedia Americana will catch anyone's attention once one enters the sophisticated library room. The 16th edition of The Chicago Manual of Style will obviously entice a language geek or anyone interested in the craft of writing English. Another style manual, Modern Language Association of America's MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers, was also seen among the ranks of books. There are too many entrance exam guidebooks, among them Donald Asher's Graduate Admission Essays (4th Edition) being of note, which might be helpful for candidates in writing Statement of Purpose, Essays, etc. Magazines that can be read here incorporate Rolling Stone, Popular Science, Poetry by Poetry Foundation, and many more.

These US-patronised libraries consist of accessions that take on US policies and politics, which in turn adds to their charm and makes them more lively places.

Fakrul Alam describes the British Council, which was initially opened on Nazimuddin Road, in poetic prose in the same The Daily Star Book of Bangladeshi Writing:

"And then there was the British Council Library. Perhaps memory always rose-tints the past, but it seems to me now that it was the friendliest part of the city then. The lush green lawn and the open spaces that surrounded the library, the access to stacks and stacks of books, the periodicals that you could leaf through, anything from the latest cricket news to reviews of books, the abundantly stocked reference section that was a source of special delight for me, the rows after rows of books that you could explore-here was God's plenty!"

"The Dhaka University library had no doubt a much richer collection, but inside the British Council Library, you could occasionally experience the bibliophile's ultimate thrill: leafing through yellowing pages of a fairly old book, only to set it aside for another one, or merely reading surreptitiously through a page or two, secure in the knowledge that not all books are to be swallowed, chewed and digested, that at least a few are to be tasted, and that was what the British Council Library was for! I would take a book or a periodical on a lazy day, sit down in one of the chairs, and then dream away, secure in the feeling that ‘There is no frigate like a book/To take us lands away/Nor any coursers like a page/Of prancing poetry!"

The author of this article also fondly recalls reading Craig Thompson's graphic novel Habibi and the host of magazines at the Fuller Rd central branch. But much like Khademul Islam, before taking in the essence of the wealth of knowledge carried by books and magazines. The occasional clearance sales also make bibliophiles fancy. Although British Council physical libraries in Myanmar and Kolkata, India, among our neighbours, have stayed afloat, the one in Dhaka gave way to an online library, to readers' dismay. However, while the regular membership fee is Tk 1500 per annum, during the Ekushey Book Fair, you can avail yourself of British Councils' ebooks, magazines, newspapers, films and TV shows at a discount of Tk 200 as of the 2024 fair.

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