https://www.ikhtisad.com/home daily 1.0 2023-01-18 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/60ca1baaf77bea06741a3897/1623858184699-KPNXYUFODFM1DCJ55IYF/P31010282.jpg Home - Ikhtisad Ahmed is a human rights lawyer turned writer from Bangladesh. Ikhtisad’s fiction, non-fiction and poetry engage with socio-political issues, with a focus on the marginalised, the vulnerable and the oppressed. https://www.ikhtisad.com/about daily 0.75 2021-08-02 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/60ca1baaf77bea06741a3897/1626113560152-PUP9GWCNRAE6IDTL6RCH/Ikhtisad+Ahmed.jpg About - About me My parents hoped for an engineer. I perplexed them by wanting to be a writer. We reached a compromise: I read law, trained as a barrister, and became, at best, a middling lawyer. The years of nomadically drifting through the legal profession was me taking the scenic route to writing. Now that I am attempting to be, at worst, a middling writer, my parents are amongst my fiercest supporters. I write because I am from Bangladesh, and because of the accident of birth that made Ekusher Prothom Kobi (author of the first poem about the Language Movement of 1952), Mahbub ul Alam Chowdhury my Nana (maternal grandfather). The former makes me value justice, humanity and the need for, and power of words. The latter instilled in me an unwavering belief in freethinking and freedom of speech, and inexorably sewed me into the fabric of our culture and literature. We belong on the world stage. I write to elevate us to our rightful place. https://www.ikhtisad.com/fiction daily 0.75 2021-08-02 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/60ca1baaf77bea06741a3897/1626024911993-NNO5FHTAKMJQT7JSSVHH/FINAL+COVER+IMAGE.jpg Fiction - Yours, Etcetera In 2015, Bengal Lights Books brought out a collection of my short stories that spoke to the human condition. Yours, Etcetera brought together previously published stories with new ones. “Ikhtisad Ahmed’s debut collection of 11 short stories merges the absurd with the real, creating a world in the reader’s mind that can be both joyous and unsettling. Influences of Camus, Beckett, Kafka and Orwell are much in evidence in the overarching literary philosophy of the stories, exposing life’s many incongruities aided by sharp prose and a macabre sense of humour.” - Ahsan Akbar, author of The Devil’s Thumbprint and Director of the Dhaka Literary Festival, in the Tank Magazine, Issue 83 “Ikhtisad Ahmed provides us with a surrealist glimpse of the nightmarish reality that is society governed by racism, corruption and oppression. Using elements of absurdity, he draws the reader into a world where individuals are silenced by terror and violence, and personal fears can no longer be distinguished above the multitudes of suffering.” - Meike Ziervogel, author of Magda and Kauthar, and Founding Publisher of Peirene Press “Crisp and thoughtful, these stories cut to the heart of our existence.” - Kunal Basu, author of Kalkatta and The Japanese Wife “Tough, clear-sighted and deftly paced, these intriguing stories navigate the shifting geographies of our contemporary reality. A welcome new addition to the growing corpus of Bangladeshi writing in English.” - Aamer Hussein, author of Electric Shadows https://www.ikhtisad.com/poetry daily 0.75 2026-03-17 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5ec321c2af33de48734cc929/1618497259178-6XJGK9GR6YAVBQL5L519/20140301_Trade-151_012-2.jpg Poetry https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5ec321c2af33de48734cc929/1607694583486-2PQT0LQ193RL7MCB6DX4/20140228_Trade+151_0046.jpg Poetry https://www.ikhtisad.com/nonfiction daily 0.75 2026-02-26