I want to make a confession before I start the book review and here it goes: I have become somewhat cynical these days when it comes to books penned by Bangladeshi authors. The Humayun Ahmed era is still going on with most writers following his writing style and plebeian premises and so, nine times out of ten I feel like I have read the story before. The inspirational spark is elusive and virtually impossible to repeat when books are deliberately (or cynically) written to appeal to the Humayun-Ahmed-fan market. The author, regardless of age, must have a genuine enthusiasm for the subject in addition to a large dose of originality and imagination. So, literally, I was in for a big surprise when I started reading ‘The Merman’s Prayer and Other Stories’ because here in this book, Syed Manzoorul Islam happens to have integrated all three of these qualities, adding a new feather in his cap since this is his first collection of stories in English and making the volume of 16 short stories an engrossing page-turner that even I managed to enjoy despite my cynical self. 1. The Two Assassins Rating: 3.8/5.0 Syed Manzoorul Islam keeps electrifying the readers with the third story of his book named ‘The Two Assassins’ in which he presents a hilarious account of a 13-mile long trip to Noahata taken by Zebunnessa, a cantankerous old lady in her fifties, who harbours a seemingly never-ending grudge against her daughter-in-law and puts all her energy into making the young wife’s life a living hell and Kobori, the poor daughter-in-law of 24, who, despite being an ordinary rural housewife, knows how to utilize her tremendous level of self-confidence to survive in an unfriendly place like her in-law’s house. Integrating an enormous level of wit and ingenuity with equally great amounts of humour and irony, the author has patterned the whole story after the bitter-sweet relationship between these two ladies who represent the age-old scenario of how mother-in-laws and daughter-in-laws of our country engage in extreme brawls over petty issues and then resolve their problems right away when they have a crisis situation. The story starts with these two ladies travelling a long distance to see Kobori’s ill husband, Nazib, who works in a government hospital as a ward supervisor and waits the whole week for 44-48 hours of happiness available to him only when he comes home on his weekends. So, when on one Thursday night, Nazib does not show up, tension mounts in the minds of the mother and the wife about whether something terrible has happened to the only breadwinner of the family, but just when the grocer Matiar informs them of Nazib’s sudden illness, they readily take on a surprisingly selfish appearance, shifting their anxiety over Nazib’s condition to their own uncertain future that is left with a big question mark against what will happen to them ‘if anything happens to Naizzu’. The author has amazingly blended subtle humour with dramatic sarcasm in depicting the whole journey taken by Zebunnessa and Kobori and has also shown the readers how sourness in any relationship can take individuals on the verge of senility that they start taking, in their mind, the life of their near and dear ones. Zebunnessa and Kobori don’t miss a single opportunity for trash talking while on their way to hospital and at certain point, they start washing their dirty linen in public, hurling unspeakably abusive words at each other. But the readers are in for a twist when the ladies face a boat accident in which Kobori goes insane when she finds that her mother-in-law is missing. The author wonderfully reveals the terror and desperation in Kobori’s mind through her frantic search for Zebunnessa when she uses all her strength to scream ‘Where are you, Ma?... Please Ma, don’t go!’. So, when Kobori finally finds and rescues her mother-in-law, the spectacular scene of their reconciliation builds hope in the readers’ minds that maybe these two ladies will stop being malicious to each other and start having a healthy and friendly relationship onwards. But Syed Manzoorul Islam again comes up with another twist, shattering all the expectations of readers, when the ladies, on their way home from Noahata, are seen to visualize the death scene of the other so that each of them can live the rest of their life happily ever after. Islam leaves the readers a bit unhappy and dissatisfied at the end of the story as they don’t get to see if a cold-blooded murder actually takes place or not but still the author gives the readers a significant amount of thoughts on this one burning question: Will a healthy and sweet relationship between mother-in-laws and daughter-in-laws of our society ever become a reality? 2. She Rating: 3.7/5.0 ‘She’ is a story of a helpless village girl, Lipi, who becomes worried at the news of her pregnancy after four years into her marriage because our so-called patriarchal society has made it obvious for g