Incandescence

by Mehreen Ahmed

New ISBN: 978-1915819048

Incandescence is a novel about a fallen aristocratic family set in 1970, Bangladesh. In a nuanced tale of love and betrayal, the protagonist embarks on an introspective journey of self-discovery, space, and time. Growing up in this odd and dysfunctional family, Mila Chowdhury discovers life's intrinsic value. There is a huge gap between what is and what should be. How does one overcome such limitations and shortcomings? Paradoxically, the answer lay right here, within her own odd family.

Paperback

Published December 9, 2022

About the author

Midwest Book Review acclaimed_"A deftly crafted and consistently entertaining novel,"The Pacifist" reveals Australian author Mehreen Ahmed's exceptional flair for narrative storytelling and compellingly memorable characters.Original, compelling,skillfully written from cover to cover, "The Pacifist" is very highly recommended". It is also, a Drunken Druid Editor's Choice.She has authored eleven books and over four hundred shorts.Her shorts have been translated into Greek,Bangla,German and have won contests,shortlisted for Editor's Choice Awards,nominations for BestSmallFictions,5xbotN,Pushcart and JamesTait. AntipodeSF Radio featured her shorts. Currently,she is the Guest Fiction Editor of Panorama:Journal for Travel,Place, and Nature,UK.

>Publications/Forthcoming
BendingGenres,Boudin:McNeeseStateUniversity,CambridgeUniversityPress,ChironReview,UniversityofHawaii Press,MichiganStateUniversityPress,PerceptionMagazine:SyracuseUniversity,StraylightMagazine:WisconsinParklandUniversity,TheTalonReview:NorthFloridaUniversity,MetachrosisLiterary:DundeeUniversity,BitterleafBooks:YSJ,PopshotQuarterly,CoffinBell,AntipodeanSF,Aphelion:Website of ScienceFictionandFantasy,Callej,UniversityofKentPress,TheSheaf,Jimson WeedUVA,UltramarineLitRev,TheBayouReview,MuseIndia,CentaurLit,HootReview,
ShortsMagazine,BlazeVOX,ArgyleLiteraryMagazine,JournalofExpressiveWriting,SixSentences,IceFloePress,LitroUK,PanoramaTheJournalofTravelPlaceandNature,MrBull,Otoliths,SoFloPoJo,
OlneyMagazine,AlternateRoute,TheGorkoGazette,PorchLitMag,WordCityLit,TheAntonym,The HennepinReview,LiteraryHeist,MadSwirl,
AlienBuddha,RogueAgent,VineLeafReview,OctoberHillMagazine,OddballMagazine,InParenthesis.artLitMagNew Modernism,ConnotationPress,DoorIsAJar,ELJ
ScissorsandSpackle,VisualVerse,FlashBoulevard,
FiveMinutes,QuateraryRealmsAnthology,ChewersandMasticadores,QuailBell,Crêpe&Penn,FlashFrontier,EllipsisZine,Ginosko#24#29#30,TheCabinetofHeed,ActiveMuse,HeroinChic,LoveInTheTime ofCovidChronicle,WellingtonStreetReview,NailpolishStories,Setu,ImpspiredMagazine,ThornLiterary,Magazine,3MoonMagazine,SageCigarettes,TheBombayReview,FlashBackFiction,DownInTheDirt,DarkWinterLiteraryMagazine,AcademyOfHeartAndMind,PikerPress,Kitaab,CommuterLit,AngelCityReview,FreeFlashFiction,CafeDissensus,ThePunch,FurtiveDalliance,InkPantry,FlashFictionNorth,BridgeHouse,CosmicTeapot and others.

Awards/Nominations/Recognitions
>Winner
DrunkenDruid'sEditor'sChoice2017/ThePacifist
FirstPlace_AcademyoftheHeartandMind,May FlowersContest2022/ThePhasesoftheMoon
CoWinner_WaterlooWritingCompetition May2020/Dolly
AyaskalaLiteraryMagazine2023/RainandCoffee
Cabinet-of-Heed Stream-of-ConsciousnessChallenge April2020 DrawerFour/BlackMirror
>Nominations
DitmarAwards2025,Maya:AntipodeanSF
BestSmallFictions2025,TheStretch:Boudin
FiveBestoftheNet,Interlude-LiteratiMagazine,Elysium:FlashFictionNorth,Ylem-PortlandMetrozine2020,NumberNinetyFour:DecolonialPassage,OftheBlueEvening:GorkoGazette2025
Pushcart2020,Ylem:PaperDjinn
JamesTaitBlackPrize2021,Gatherings:BridgeHousePublishing
>Finalist/Shortlist
Finalist:FourthAdelaideLiteraryAward contest,February2020/FlowerGirl/
Shortlisted:FreedomFictionJournalEditor'sChoiceAwards/Flamenco2024
>Honourable Mentions
WeaversOfWordsContestUnpublishedPlatform 2022/SilentBleat
>Bestof/MostRead/Top10
AntipodeanSF25PainttheCityRed
AntipodeanSF25Cloudfields
EthelZine24Dead-Fly
AlienBuddha23/24TheRiverofMelted Chocolate/The Scripts
TheGorkoGazette23/OftheBlueEvening ReadersFavFic
MadSwirl23/24Space/Vape/CitySmell/InStillness
ImpspiredMag/MultipleTimesTop10Read
CafeLit8Writer'sChoice2019BatsDownunder.
>Milestone Selection
AlienBuddha2023/DeepWell
>Special Collector's Edition
PopshotQuarterly 41:2023/RiverofMeltedChocolate.
>Audiobooks Best Seller/Others
ThePacifist2017
PeekingCatLiterary

Reviews

[Boyko Ovcharov · Rating 5 out of 5]

Well-written, intelligent, emotional, taking a human/ethical perspective.

Set in Bangladesh in the late 20th century, it is an intergenerational family story, featuring love, romance, war, drama, culture, traditions, modern requirements and changes/developments.

The protagonist, Mila, starts her own life journey - towards maturity, growing up, introspection with some philosophical insights.

It is an immersive read that will definitely enrich readers' knowledge.

Impressive author's biography as well.

Highly recommended.

[Mehreen Ahmed · Rating 5 out of 5]

Incandescence

by Dr Modhura Banerjee Assistant Professor and Head of Department
Jamini Mazumder Memorial College, West Bengal.

Radiating the Incandescent: Reading Ahmed and Remembering Tagore

Mehreen Ahmed’s Incandescence is a parallel exploration into the conflicts and stasis of liberation offered by eternal love and sluggish boundaries of nuptial domesticity. Mila, Rahim, Papri, Irfaan are Mehreen’s own version of Tagore’s Labanya, Amit, Ketaki and Shovonlal from his pathbreaking novel ‘Sesher Kobita’ ( The Last Poem) that has inspired the author in different phases of her adulting. Rahim And Mila,much like Tagore’s Amit and Labanya are star-crossed lovers, who redefine love by freeing it from the shackles of carnal domestic fulfilment which would in turn corrupt the purity, intensity and incandescence of what they possessed. Their love was their only chance at eternal, infinite, rejuvenation within their limited mortal existence which they did not want to soil through matrimony. Therefore, they chose to marry different partners Papri and Irfaan, who were prosaic alternations of their poetic love. Papri, a sad orphan, victim to her own circumstance, having little choice but to accept the second position in her husband’s life and Irfaan hopelessly trying to domesticate and match up to an undaunted spirit like Mila, both inevitably ending up in tragic isolation.

Mila is as strikingly iconoclastic as Labanya, yet at times so fragile, vulnerable and confused about her choice between accepting her love for Rahim or abiding to her duty as a wife to Irfaan, questioning the ethical boundaries that societal hegemony has taught her or accepting them stoically. Every choice and slips had it consequences, ensuing its own trail of tragedy, adding to the essence of Mila, taking her world by storm. Mila is guilt-ridden for her affection for Rahim due to her empathy for Papri, yet she indulges in his letters, finds validation in his love. Mila is terrified of waking-up late and displeasing her in-laws yet some how fathoms the courage to break away from a failing marriage which refuses to accept her individuality. It is the quirky women characters like Mrs. Chowdhury, Saima, Rabeya that light up the world of Incandescence. However lines like:
“She loved her life, she hated her life, she just didn’t know what to do with her life, her suffering purpled like the blooming jacarandas under silent, grey sky”- is where the true treasure of the book lies. It brilliantly demonstrates the skilful art of Mehreen Ahmed, her dexterity with rhetoric, her craftsmanship of language, her fondness and familiarity with the soil of Dacca. Such beautiful and powerful expressions to communicate complex human emotions is indeed a rare find. The novel is strewn with poetical diction often used to depict the raw interplay of the human world with the nature-both in its vernal tides and withering winters. The trees, the sound of azan, the aroma of coffee, the fallen branches, the lakes, the rotting grass, the changing seasons affect and predict the emotional landscape of the humans.

[Kerri · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am a fan of the poetic, flowing writing of Mehreen Ahmed and so have become familiar with the Chowdhury family. Her descriptions of the incredible beauty of a country I have never even dreamed of seeing pulls you in so deeply, that you believe you can smell the orchard and garden surrounding the old House of Chowdhury.

This story weaves the tale of this once great family through many generations, of which Mila, our main character, is the newest until the end. She hears the stories of her grandmother's world and the changes wrought by history and seeks to find her place in it. It is a love story. Not only the love of husbands and wives but of family, raised to understand the great connection between blood and those brought into it by love and kindness. It shows us that presenting oneself in one way does not equal fact but living life as one desires to live may well create the life you choose.

This love story, this story of history and generations, of abandonment, infidelity, Sharia Law, strong and powerful women, and overcoming adversity in our lives is a gift in how it shows it can be done. I recommend this lovely, powerful story. It was a breeze to read as it will keep your thoughts flowing until the very end.

Thank you, Mehreen Ahmed, for sharing your gift of writing with all of us, your readers. It is always a pleasure to fall into one of your stories.

[Joanna Theiss · Rating 5 out of 5]

In her novel Incandescence, Mehreen Ahmed deposits the reader directly into the House of Chowdhury, a tumbledown, once magnificent home in what is now Bangladesh. The house itself, which is the novel’s showpiece, is an “imposing two-storied brick building” standing very close – both physically and metaphorically – to “the far end of an alley… a disreputable site where scandalous affairs took place… a hotbed for runaway lovers.” Through her vivid and poetic language, Ahmed bestows on the reader the status of an honorary Chowdhury: a privileged child of a once wealthy and important family, though one riddled with scandal. As a Chowdhury, we must watch, helpless, as our spouse leaves us for a younger, more exciting partner, as the walls of our house come crashing down on the most innocent of us, as rains dilute the lassis our faithful servants hand to wedding guests.
The story opens with Mila Chowdhury contemplating her grandmother’s journals and her own misadventures in love, and through her and her grandmother’s memories we learn about this varied family going back decades, their struggles to survive colonialism and war, battle personal temptations (often losing), and finding comfort and communion in small acts: in pouring tea, in bringing a broken radio to a mechanic, in quietly loving stepchildren who only want their mother.
As Ahmed describes in her opening note, the novel is a rumination on ethical behavior, “on the exploitation of the characters to the extent of what to expect from life,” but it does not judge its characters for their many mistakes, and thus makes it impossible for us to judge them. Instead, we root for Mila, despite her headlong rush into love with a person she doesn’t know well. We also root for Prema, looking past her infidelities and abandonment to her passion to make the most of her life and to love whom she loves, despite the difficulties. Those characters who seem to be mostly victims of other people’s blunders are awarded with our sympathy, too, but it is the flaws which make Ahmed’s gorgeously-rendered characters, and the imperfectly perfect House of Chowdhury, glow so bright.

[Meag · Rating 5 out of 5]

Incandescence by Mehreen Ahmed is equal parts endearing, philosophical, and sentimental. An intergenerational love story focused on three generations of the aristocratic but afflicted Chowdhury family as they struggle to understand love, war, infidelity, marriage, each other, and themselves. I’ve read two other novels by Ahmed and this author’s writing only gets stronger. Tender but sharp, I gobbled this whole book up in one day. Five stars.

Some of my favorite lines:

“How can one benchmark ethical problems? Can it be benchmarked at all?”

“Her soul, never at peace, oscillated between here and there.”

“The killers, the army, called themselves human but even the dead seemed more human.”

“Death fed on.”

“Whoever penned the future entries, the diary had to continue. Because life couldn’t be silenced.”

[Damhuri Muhammad · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mehreen Ahmed's Incandescence is a postcolonial novel built from the ruins of the fall of an aristocratic family after the 1971 Bangladeshi independence revolution. Ahmed called it The Fallen Zamindar which was centralized in an extended noble family (House of Chowdhury), and reminded me of an extended family which was also the center of the storytelling in Geetanjali Shree's Tomb of Sand. Its cultural dignity in Asian communitarian society hasn't only been eroded by European colonialism, but, as narrated by Incandescence, has also been destabilized by the well-educated middle class, which was actually born and raised by the Zamindars. So, modernity which is destroying old-fashioned norms doesn't come from outside, but rather from within the postcolonial culture itself. Individualism has slowly grown since the generations of Nazmun Banu's (Mila's mother), Ashik, Sheri, Lutfun and branched out like a parasite in the Chowdhury family, until the latest descendant, Mila Chowdhury.

Raiza Chowdhury, the charismatic woman of the House of Chowdhury, the main guardian of traditional norms, Raiza had to fight against western individualism which has penetrated into the minds of her own descendants. She and her husband seem to be facing the threat of their own shadows. They certainly still have legal authority over the sustainability of the aristocratic family, and control over property and all forms of luxury in the House of Chowdhury. That's why, they didn't hesitate to expel Ashik Chowdhury and revoke his inheritance rights, because it was claimed that the youngest son's unforgivable mistake had dented the Chowdhury family's pride. However, they couldn't overthrow the critical thoughts of their children and grandchildren.

Ashik Chowdhury got caught dating a neighbor's wife. All members of Chowdhury's extended family—particularly Mr and Mrs Chowdhury—were in an uproar after he married the unapproved woman in front of a mosque Imam.
Though Ashik's social status has fell to the lowest level, he doesn't regret his individual choices which are contrary to the communal wisdom held firmly by his extended family. In fact, he became increasingly stubborn in holding firmly to the risky principle, after getting silent support from his close siblings (Sheri and Lutfun). As the youngest son of the Chowdhury family, he is not shy about selling pots and pans, sarees, and bed covers, which he laid out on the open pavement, to provide for his family's basic needs. He completely let go of all financial dependence on his rich parents, and chose to live in a rented house in a slum area. The story about the difficulties of daily life of residents around Ashik's rented house shows how contrasting the gap between rich and poor was in the early days of Bangladesh's independence.

The net resistance of old-fashioned communal culture was played by Mila, the youngest descendant of the noble Chowdhury family. She is different from his uncle (Ashik) who was kicked out of the house. Mila doesn't mind arranged marriages. However, after marrying Irfaan, and living in the Chiwdury family's luxurious house as a young mistress, she never forgot her true lover, Rahim Ali
a Bangladeshi revolutionary fighter, who had actually married another woman. Mila felt that her arranged marriage was just the Chowdhury family's way of maintaining the family's dignity, and they didn't respect her individual choices. Mila's grief was an opportunity for Mehreen Ahmed to reveal the past suffering of Nazmun Banu (Mila's mother). In the Chowdury House, she is no more than a daughter-in-law, precisely the first wife of Raiza Chowdury's other son. Ekram (Mila's father) remarried another woman and was considered as normal habit by his parent. Luckily, Nazmun was the first wife, she deserved to live in the Chowdury House, and enjoyed all the luxuries of a rich wife, even though she suffered because her husband was polygamous. So, Nazmun Banu's grief was acted by Mila, her beloved daughter.

This 408-page consists of 25 titled chapters, and if read separately, felt like an individual short story. Ahmed composed it with the space and time of the present, and the past, both of which are continually connected. Ahmed's writing skill makes detailed descriptions of background scenes seem the light of twilight falling on the surface of the river, which coincides with the Azan that echoes around our settlement.

[Chitra Gopalakrishnan · Rating 5 out of 5]

From A Candle To A Flame To A Wildfire Of Hope
By Chitra Gopalakrishnan

Mehreen Ahmed’s ‘Incandescence’ folds into its pages the intriguing story of the making of Bangladesh as a nation in 1971. A mere gleam of an idea in the eyes of visionaries in the earlier years, this yearning emerged as a revolution and then a nation with a suddenness, with seemingly nothing preordained about the upsurge other than a swelling of protests and rallies.

But the bridled energies and emotions of people suppressed over centuries, gathered high amounts of precipitation in a short period of time like the monsoons in this region, exploding hard and fast into unrelenting violence, one that cleaved this region from its earlier geographical loyalties and devastated lives, lifestyles and destinies. Restoration has been slow in the making and is, as yet, an enterprise in progress. After all, social engineering takes time to come to fruition and comes at a price.

While the book subtly yet tangibly juxtaposes the past history of the region against the revolution and its entailing current realities, what runs as a leitmotif is the many other contrarieties that prevail within this milieu. An elitist way of life with ancestral homes, manicured gardens and orchards that contrasts with the popular will of people and their lives in the filth of slums. The raw-edged contradictions between cultural continuities and cultural pluralism. Secular values at variance with polemical views. Community cohesion in dissimilitude with individualists seeking a discrete identity for themselves. And, outgrown traditional values of morality turning incongruous with the unfolding new norms, the tentative new normal. And just so many more of such thorny anomalies.

Mehreen Ahmed’s ‘Incandescence’ opens strikingly with the exploration of the intense longings of Mila who is torn between staying in her marriage that has lost it appeal and integrity and following the trail of a promising romance, one nipped in the bud. It follows the contours of her emotional fault lines and keeps up with her storyline with meticulous attention to detail till she arrives upon her decided-upon destination.

The tale, meanwhile, also, draws us in effortlessly and completely into the lives and incipient dreams of several women in her family and friend circle, across four generations, all associated with the House of Chowdhury. This is an enormous, magnificent residence, whose glory, riches and values are caught in a double whammy: its already diminishing influence now plummeting into irrelevance with the change in the societal matrix; the pincher effect proving too much to withstand for its residents.

In this regal, elegant house, Mila’s grandmother Raiza Chowdhury fights to retain the legacy of her home and her values even as she tries to control the lustful ways of her sons. Her mother Nazmun Banu holds on to her thrice-married husband which on the surface may appear to the readers to be submissive and weak-willed but if one cared to take a closer look it reveals her tenacity to stay rooted against all odds. Her aunt Lutfun follows her childhood sweetheart’s dreams by marrying the second Chowdhury son but eventually finds her own felicity with a spry that defines her. Prema, her other aunt, who in an audacious move abandons her husband and three children to marry the youngest Chowdhury son, says her truth is hers alone and she will stand by it even if others don’t understand or empathise with it. Shreya, her best friend, has her own journey to make, to find closure and her peace for the horrors of the revolution visited upon her sister, and, thus, on the family as a whole. Her orphaned maid Shimul has to find the courage to create her own new world when hers literally collapses on her and injures her severely. And, Saima, her very own daughter, in complete contrast to her, wants to retrace her steps and find her paternal roots from which she has been severed.

Each of these women attempts to find their inner incandescence in their own way as the accepted and right way stands subverted. Are they all completely, perfectly and incandescently happy as they find the lives they have been denied? Maybe, maybe not. But their personal breakthroughs and choices are theirs, theirs alone, theirs to own and theirs to spurn. Some accept the conditions as they exist and others take responsibility for changing them. It is their journeys recounted with such vibrancy that lends the book its élan vitale.

The men in the book are given to licentious behaviour and don’t waste time agonising over their wildly oscillating moral compasses. But the author’s gaze sweeps through their lives with compassion as the world as they know it begins to collapse before their alarmed eyes with each passing day and they increasingly lose control over their lives, their self-assuredness. So despite their flaws, they demand our empathy as they are treated with compassion.

Binding all her character’s individual struggles survival together is the larger issue of the real nature of life, its elemental truth seeded in the daily-ness of living. One that has the potential to lift one from sadness to hope, from darkness to incandescence. That is if one wishes to discover it, dares to explore it and take it to an afterlife, an issue touched upon repeatedly through the book and not so fleetingly.

Mehreen’s control over the storyline is masterly as she switches from the large historical canvas to the everyday routines within a home and then into the intimacies of personal spaces, into the language of longing. The spare and sprawl of her content is in balance.

Her prose is one of liquid grace like the rains of Bangladesh, evocative and flowing. Both the rains and her words gird us and hold us within their spell. She captures the volley of gunfire as brilliantly she does the whooshes of bamboo groves.

Her gift of description is such that you can taste the history, culture and daily experiences of Bangladesh. An inkling of just how is here in these lines: “No one would understand or even care, why her love had increased lately for the incessant rainfall, and the swishes of the gusty winds, or the mists of the opaque drizzles, the frolicking birds such as the crows with their measured picks off the lake’s surface.”

[Leslie aka StoreyBook Reviews · Rating 4 out of 5]

This novel looks at a multigenerational family, their expectations, and the reality of life.

The story starts with poetic descriptions of Mila and her love for Rahim. We watch her struggle with loving him but not being able to have him in her life due to his imposed relationship with Papri. This is a time of arranged marriages and family expectations that transcend love. 

The story is set in Bangladesh, a part of the world I only know a little about, so I was engrossed in the family dynamics, politics of these towns, and the acceptance of situations that others might find immoral. I appreciated that not everyone in this one family agreed with the Matriarch's decision to disown one of her children, supported him and his wife, and helped them along in life.

Times were not easy for anyone in this family, and they had to battle strife in their village and impending doom from the political side of their life.

It did take some time to get into the groove of the story, but once I did, it flowed seamlessly, and I enjoyed delving into the lives of these characters and the dilemmas that they faced.

We give this book 4 paws up.

[Stace · Rating 5 out of 5]

‘Incandescence’ is a family saga from the pen of Australian-based author, Mehreen Ahmed. We meet Mila of the House of Chowdhury, an aristocratic family originally from a village on the Kali River. Flooding caused Mila’s grandparents and many others to uproot from their
villages and migrate to towns and cities. During the course of the story, we meet Mila’s extended family and witness their life successes and struggles against a backdrop of the changing times in East Pakistan as it emerges as Bangladesh.

The linchpin of this family is Mila’s grandmother, formidable matriarch, Raiza Chowdhury. She tells us her backstory from when she left her father’s wooden palace as a young bride. The plot centres on the complex and sometimes dysfunctional dynamics of this multi-generational family as they try to preserve a façade of nobility despite their diminished wealth.

Themes running through this book include moral values, rules, traditions and customs. We also learn about some Islamic laws, such as allowing a man to take subsequent wives but only if his first wife agrees. We see the polarisation of society with privilege and poverty inequal measure. The author touches on areas such as infrastructure, religion, politics, food, clothing and lifestyle. We witness innermost thoughts, envy, greed, loyalty and betrayals along with a variety of romantic relationships, from the acceptable to the clandestine. Mila takes us into her confidence as she experiences feelings of jealousy and guilt when she finds the man she loves is married to her friend.

Many readers need to be hooked by the beginning of a book and therefore the first chapter needs to pack a metaphorical punch. This story is told through inclusion and we find Mila in a café reminiscing with the aid of her grandmother’s diary and her own additions. I felt the start was top-heavy with imagery. Whilst metaphors and similes are very useful literary aids to add depth and colour, there needs to be balance between flowery language and plot. As the tale unfolded, I found myself engaging fully as the layers of the complex lives of these characters were peeled back. I enjoyed discovering the meanings behind some Islamic words and glimpsing the changing times where personal achievement and ambition clashed with a centuries-old ascribed culture and the turmoil this caused.

This book is thought-provoking with a variety of social messages, giving a snapshot of the life of a family living through a civil war and individual challenges to find their place in a fledgling country. I award four-and-a-half stars.

[For The Novel Lovers · Rating 4 out of 5]

Book Review

Title: Incandescence by Mehreen Ahmed

Genre: Literary Fiction, Drama

Rating: 4 Stars

Mehreen Ahmed’s Incandescence is a literary exploration of memory, identity, and the fragility of perception, wrapped in a stream-of-consciousness narrative that reads like a dreamscape. Set in Bangladesh, a country torn between tradition and modernity, this novel is less about plot and more about the inner world of its protagonist, a young woman named Mila among others.

Ahmed's prose is lyrical, almost poetic, weaving together fragmented memories and disjointed thoughts with a cadence that mirrors the mental disarray of someone grappling with loss, confusion, and dislocation. The novel's strength lies in its atmosphere—ethereal, haunting, and at times disorienting. Through shifting timelines and kaleidoscopic imagery, the reader is invited to experience Mila’s world not as a fixed reality, but as a stream of impressions, dreams, and recollections.

One of the most compelling aspects of Incandescence is its engagement with cultural identity and existential solitude. Mila’s experiences are marked by both personal trauma and the weight of a collective, often ambiguous cultural heritage. This creates a universal resonance that speaks to anyone who has felt estranged from their environment or from themselves.

However, the novel's stylistic choices may not appeal to all readers. The lack of conventional structure and the abstract narrative require patience and a willingness to let go of linear expectations. For readers open to a more experimental form, Incandescence offers a rewarding dive into the emotional and psychological intricacies of its protagonist’s mind.

Ultimately, Incandescence is a quiet, introspective novel that burns with the soft glow of reflection. Mehreen Ahmed challenges traditional storytelling, offering a piece of literature that is as much about language and mood as it is about character and theme. It’s a novel best read slowly, letting each image settle and each sentence echo.

[Amys Bookshelf Reviews · Rating 5 out of 5]

Simply awe-inspiring

Mehreen Ahmed writes a grand and imspiring collection of stories with Incandescence. The reader is introduced to many characters from different stories. The stories include café, lake, interlude, southbound, nighthawk, bibi-wife, awakening, waves, love, memory, roof, silence, change, meeting, proposal and many more, including the title of the book. The character, Prema was in many stories, and when I read them, I realized these were part of her life, it just wasn't another story, with characters that share a name. I enjoyed each story, but one of my favorites was "bibi-wife." In Islam, the word bibi means wife, or mistress of the house. The stories revolve around House of Chowdhury, and its generations of falling in love with someone who may not have been the best choice, but sometimes the heart wants what the heart wants. I am really big fan of Mehreen Ahmed, and I love how her culture weaves in and out of her stories, and she has this mind that we are so lucky that she shares it with her readers. In bibi-wife, Prema is pregnant, and still has to help her husband selling fruits and vegetables on the street to ungrateful customers. Prema's thoughts are shared with her husband, Ashik, "“Regarding the prophet, of all the bad things we hear about his multiple marriages, or rather, promiscuity, he only just had one son and one daughter.” But Ashik is too tired to listen. Whatever this author writes, I want to read. This author brings the story to life. Mehreen's passion is shown through every word, every character, every story. Incandescence is a definite recommendation by Amy's Bookshelf Reviews. I read this book to give my unbiased and honest review. Amy's Bookshelf Reviews recommends that anyone who reads this book, to also write a review.

[Joseph Ferguson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Incandescence is a stunningly written meditation on love, war, happiness, infidelity, joy, sorrow, life, death, and beyond.

Ahmed’s ethereal, poetic, prose is perfectly attuned to the subject matter. Each paragraph is like a small poem that blooms like a flower, into the larger opus. Throughout, it is filled with beautiful imagery. “The guests held their hands up, like half-opened pistachio shells, to pray.” (Page 237).

Mila, the main character, is herself like an unfinished poem as she reflects on the multiple versions of love she observes in the people who surround her, while awaiting her own blossoming love; perhaps in the form of Rahim Ali, a man who has pledged himself to her, but marries another.

In this state of Limbo, she contemplates the sundry forms love can take. Is it better with money, in poverty, legitimate, or taboo? Is it worth abandoning children for? Once obtained, is the constant flux of fighting and forgiveness worth the toll?

Foreshadowing her own marriage Mila quotes a poem to her future husband, "You marry the one you don't love, You love the one you don’t marry.” (Page 198)

In the end, love cannot be explained, it simply is what it is; whatever form it takes. Some love is rock solid, some not. Something as small as a broken radio can be both the beginning of one relationship and beginning of the end for another. In love like life, the journey is what's important, not the destination, while happiness is “… much more complex. It’s almost like a shooting star which we see, but we cannot really house it.” (Page 227)

Beautifully written, filled with imagery, allusion, and symbolism, Incandescence is a must read.

[Robin Levin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Incandescence, by Mehreen Ahmed is the remarkable story of an aristocratic family in Bengla Desh as it adapts to the modern world. It largely centers around Mila, the granddaughter who grows up in a rapidly changing world. When Mila is ten, her Uncle Ashik elopes with the next door neighbor’s wife Prema, the mother of three young children. Mila’s grandmother, Mrs. Chowdhury, the matriarch of the family is shocked and the couple is forced to leave the house and live in a slum. They are helped by other members of the family, however, and after a year, Prema gives birth to a son, Quasu.
The life of the household is turned upside down six years later by the devastating war for Bengla Desh’s independence. The family is forced to flee to their ancestral village. In the process, Ashik and Prema are forgiven and reconciled with the family. Mila meets and falls in love with Rahim Ali, a leader of the freedom fighters. Unfortunately, events conspire to keep them apart and Rahim Ali marries someone else.
Mila is beautiful but she feels unlovely due to her dark skin. She goes to medical school and meets Irfaan, a recent graduate in psychiatry. He courts her ardently and they marry, but red flags are abundant and eventually Mila must face the fact that the marriage was a mistake.
Incandescence is absorbing throughout and is an illuminating glimpse into a rich and exotic culture adapting painfully to changing times.

[Stephen Page · Rating 5 out of 5]

A Little Light on the Subjects

Would you marry a person you were not attracted to if that marriage guaranteed you financial security and social status? Would you marry a person you were attracted to but by doing so assured that you would live in poverty and be banished from your family? What would you do if you had the opportunity to sleep with a household employee? What would you do if you were married, and a friend asked you out for a coffee in a café next to a couple’s hotel? What would you do if your country was at civil war, and you had to flee your comfortable home to live in a strange land?
What is love? What is attraction? What is moral? What is correct? What is normal? Is everything we know and do only culturally and temporally determined?

Mehreen Ahmed deftly writes about how three generations of family handle situations that most readers will think only happen to “those kinds of people” (but is really autobiographical events in each readers life) In this enlightening novel the past is in the making at this very moment. 

Read Mehreen Ahmed’s “Incandescence” to escape to another time and place and discover the here and now.

[Kelli J · Rating 5 out of 5]

Incandescence by Mehreen Ahmed

What an absolute honor it was to read Incandescence. Diving into the lives of the nuanced characters and those surrounding The House of Chowdhury, was an absolute treat. Each character with their own thoughts, feelings and struggles, interacting with each other in both positive and negative ways, enables the reader to find a bit of themselves within. Love, loss, joy and sorrow can all be found in the 400+ poetically written pages. Ahmed’s expertise describing the surroundings, helped me know so much more about a land that I have never set foot in. After reading this fine, beautifully written book, I now feel I can smell the flowers, witness the beauty of the tree branches and feel the warm wind on my face. Incandescence is not one to be missed. It will pull you in from page one, and then make you want to return upon completion. I am forever changed from this visit to The House of Chowdhury.

Kelli J Gavin- Author of I Regret Nothing: A Collection of Poetry and Prose, and My Name Is Zach: A Teenage Perspective on Autism.

[Joshua Grant · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mehreen Ahmed lets us witness the rise and fall of a family in the wonderfully emotional and intriguing Incandescence! The House of Chowdhury is wrapped up in the chaotic midst of societal change in a vivid land. We follow several members of the family as their personal choices effect their family and the world around them, to both beautiful and devastating consequences. Ahmed’s writing has always been beautiful, poetic, and stunning, so it was a treat to see that intermingle with a twisting tale of intrigue! I personally loved how Ahmed brought these big concepts of war, societal change, and loss down to a very human level with a focus on the Chowdhury family. This is a very personal and touching novel that leaves you with deep thoughts and emotions. If you’re in the mood for a bit of philosophy, intrigue, and an emotional tale of love and loss, definitely come be illuminated with Incandescence!

[Shipra · Rating 4 out of 5]

Incandescence is inspired by Tagore's The Last Poem. It is a story about love and lust, marriage and morality, power and patriarchy.

Mila Chowdhary receives love letters from the man who was her first love, and who is now married to Mila's friend. She's torn between her feelings for the man and her loyalty to her friend. But this dilemma is not new to the Chowdhary family. Almost all marital/romantic relationships around Mila -- her grandparents', her parents', uncles', neighbors', maids' - have been at the edge of morality. You'll have to read the book to find out what Mila chooses.

The author, Mehreen Ahmed, warns us in the introduction that this book is not a morality tale. She is right. The Chowdharys are real, honest, flawed characters, who love and lust like real humans do.

[L.B. Sedlacek · Rating 5 out of 5]

In a series of passages that read like vignettes, Ahmed gives us wonderful vivid prose inspired by Rabindranath Tagore’s The Last Poem—Shesher Kobita. Ahmed says in her introduction to the book that “What’s important in this book is the exploitation of the characters to the extent of what to expect from life, in general, both philosophically and materialistically?”

Ahmed achieves answers to these questions and more in this new book. She reshapes in a way the one might think a traditional novel like book should be written. It is enlightening as well as an enveloping way to read – think Paulo Coelho type of books and writing.

Ahmed creates an all immersive atmosphere within these pages. It’s a journey you will want to take with her characters.

[Warren Alexander · Rating 5 out of 5]

I want to thank Mehreen Ahmed for opening a world of which I know so little. Her deft ability to weave the details and nuances of this society into the actions and words of the Chowdhury family, creates a remarkable novel.
Ahmed takes on some of the biggest subjects of life and literature-war, love, betrayal, familial obligation, cruel choices, and despair with a delicate and intricate language in the midst of harsh realities. The best authors lead readers to form their own conclusions about morality and the decisions of the characters. That is one of Ahmed great strengths.

Disclaimer: Mehreen Ahmed and I have appeared in two anthologies about writing.

[Daniel Fisher · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was by no means my typical genre, but I was captivated from the first page. The writing was so much prose and poetic thought and words, it dripped off the pen pulling me deep into the story. Had a friend not asked me to read it I wouldn't have had the joy delving into the richness of the story or the world it transported me to. A must read for anyone who loves a great narrative, strong character development and beautifully well written.

[P.A. · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book in “colorful” in the way it weaves cultural customs of several generations to show how they subtly, and not so subtly, affect the characters of the youngest generation portrayed. The plot is richly portrayed by the character, even though it runs back and forth through the generations within the same chapter. I recommend the book for anyone wanting to read something romantic in a far-away land.

[Samantha Terrell · Rating 5 out of 5]

I enjoyed "Incandescence" by Mehreen Ahmed, which draws in the reader with interesting character development, tales of love, and the horrors of wartime. She is a keen story-teller who weaves moral and ethical choices into the book within the context of cultural and family traditions.