Puppets Can't Pray: Part 1

A Bangladeshi-British tale of anxiety, repression, poverty and slow-burning rage in a family setting.

This novel follows a British Bengali family dominated by their authoritarian father whose compulsion to control his wife and children has, over the years, damaged them psychologically. The children are now grown up but continue to live in difficult conditions with their parents. The father cannot understand why his children have matured into such failures and pushed by unbearable financial and social pressures, which peak on the Islamic festival of Eid al-Adha, he seeks to change the spiralling decline of his family.

The major character of the novel is the eldest son of the family who, having carried his parents’ hopes, is now well into his twenties without a career and wholly dependent on his parents. He suffers from social anxiety which makes even his work in a shop a torture. Through his eyes and his siblings’, most of whom also suffer from some degree of anxiety, the novel examines the devastating effects of tyrannical patriarchy, as isolated and propped up by Islam, Bengali tradition and British society.

Puppets Can't Pray, Volume 1, is the first in a two-part series written by new British Bangladeshi author, Shah Jahan.