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Kazi Anis Ahmed

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Kazi Anis Ahmed
Born1970 (age 54–55)
NationalityBangladeshi
FatherKazi Shahid Ahmed
RelativesKazi Nabil Ahmed (sibling)

Kazi Anis Ahmed (Bengali:কাজী আনিস আহমেদ) is a Bangladeshi writer, publisher and businessman.[1] He is a co-founder[2] and publisher of the English-language daily newspaper Dhaka Tribune, online news portal Bangla Tribune[3] and the literary journal Bengal Lights. Ahmed is the author of three works of fiction. He is a co-director of the annual Bangladeshi literary festival, Dhaka Lit Fest.

Early life and education

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K.Anis Ahmed was born in Dhaka, East Pakistan on 26 September 1970. His father, Kazi Shahid Ahmed, was the founder and chairman of the Gemcon Group, and also a writer and novelist in the Bengali language.[4]

K.Anis Ahmed passed secondary school from St. Joseph Higher Secondary School, Dhaka. He went to Brown University for higher education. He has completed his PhD in comparative literature from NYU.[5]

Career

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Writings

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Ahmed's first collection of short stories, Good Night, Mr. Kissinger, was published by The University Press Limited[6] in Bangladesh and launched at the Hay Festival Dhaka, Bangladesh, in 2012.[7] Ahmed's first novel, The World in My Hands, was published by Random House India in December 2013. The book is a political satire that charts the fate of two friends – a newspaper editor and a successful property developer – whose relationship is bitterly tested when they find themselves on opposite sides of a crisis that upends their country's social order.[8][9] An early work of Ahmed's, Forty Steps (3 novella), has been published in a bi-lingual edition by Bengal Lights. It was translated into Bengali by renowned translator Manabendra Bandyopadhyay.

Business

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Ahmed is a Director of the Gemcon Group, which was founded by his father, Kazi Shahed Ahmed, 1979.[10] He has worked among other projects, for the Kazi and Kazi Tea Estate, Ltd. (KKTE).[11] Ahmed steered KKTE to emerge as the first successful organic tea estate in Bangladesh. He is co-founder of the Teatulia[12] brand of Kazi and Kazi Tea, which sells in the USA, UK,[13] Japan, China and other markets.[14][15][16]

He is a co-founder of University of Liberal Arts Bangladesh and the Vice-President of the Board of Trustees of the same university.

Publishing

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Ahmed is also publisher of the English-language daily newspaper Dhaka Tribune, the Bengali-language online newspaper Bangla Tribune[3] and the literary journal Bengal Lights.[17] Ahmed contributes to international newspapers and journals such as The New York Times,[18] TIME,[19] The Guardian,[20] Daily Beast, Wall Street Journal,[21] and Nikkei Asian Review,[22] and Politico.[23] He has co-curated special issues on Bangladesh in the literary journals Wasafiri and Granta. He wrote the opening essay for the Puterbaugh essay series in World Literature Today in December 2015[24] and was published in the Journal of Asian Studies in 2018.[25] Kazi Anis Ahmed, a writer and publisher of English daily Dhaka Tribune and online news portal Bangla Tribune, has been elected as the new president of PEN Bangladesh -- an international organization of writers, bloggers and journalists.[26]

Literary works

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  • Good Night, Mr. Kissinger (Unnamed Press, 2014), ISBN 978-1-939419-04-0
  • The World in My Hands (Random House India, 2013)
  • Forty Steps

See also

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References

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  1. ^ "Welcome to Gemcon Group". www.gemcon.group. Archived from the original on 18 May 2018. Retrieved 8 May 2018.
  2. ^ "Board of Trustees - University of Liberal Arts Bangladesh". University of Liberal Arts Bangladesh. Archived from the original on 8 May 2018. Retrieved 8 May 2018.
  3. ^ a b "Bangla Tribune - Bangla news, Behind The News". banglatribune.com. Retrieved 18 December 2017.
  4. ^ {{Cite [1]web|url=https://www.dhakatribune.com/feature/writing/2017/09/21/kazi-shahid-ahmeds-new-novel-daate-kata-pencil-unveiled/%7Ctitle=Kazi Shahid Ahmed's new novel 'Daate Kata Pencil' unveiled|website=Dhaka Tribune|language=en-US|access-date=2018-05-08}}
  5. ^ "কাজী আনিস আহমেদের 'চল্লিশ কদম': ধর্মীয় মিথ ভাঙার সার্থক প্রয়াস". web.archive.org. 9 September 2021. Retrieved 1 January 2025.
  6. ^ Sameer Rahim (17 November 2012). "Hay Dhaka 2012: The Assassin's Creed". The Daily Telegraph. Retrieved 18 December 2017.
  7. ^ David Shook (20 November 2012). "English-Language Literature Finds Its Place in Bangladesh". HuffPost. Retrieved 18 December 2017.
  8. ^ Fayeka Zabeen Siddiqua (3 January 2014). "The World in My Hands". The Daily Star. Archived from the original on 6 January 2014. Retrieved 16 February 2014.
  9. ^ "Mihir S Sharma: Writing a country". Business Standard. 13 January 2014. Retrieved 18 December 2017.
  10. ^ "Board of Directors - Gemcon Group". Retrieved 29 November 2019.
  11. ^ "Teatulia Is Taking on the Tea Industry, From Garden to Cup". WestWord. Retrieved 29 November 2019.
  12. ^ "From Bangladesh To Colorado: How One Company Is Turning More Americans Onto Tea By Sharing Its Story". Forbes. Retrieved 29 November 2019.
  13. ^ "Teatulia Literary Tea Shop Opens in London's Covent Garden". World Tea News. Retrieved 29 November 2019.
  14. ^ Ahmed, Kazi Anis
  15. ^ "Dr. Kazi Anis Ahmed at the Legatum Convergence (MIT) October 27-28, 2011". MIT Legatum Convergence. Retrieved 29 November 2019.
  16. ^ "A Growing Venture". SUCCESS Magazine. 15 November 2012. Archived from the original on 9 May 2018. Retrieved 18 December 2017.
  17. ^ "K Anis Ahmed's novel The World In My Hands launched". The Daily Star. 31 December 2013. Archived from the original on 1 February 2014.
  18. ^ "Articles by K. Anis Ahmed". Retrieved 1 April 2019.
  19. ^ "Beating Terrorism in Bangladesh Requires Public and Personal Commitment". 11 July 2016. Retrieved 1 April 2019.
  20. ^ "Things we don't write: K Anis Ahmed on the murdered writers of Bangladesh". 9 December 2015. Retrieved 1 April 2019.
  21. ^ "Bangladesh's Vanishing Justice". 30 April 2012. Retrieved 1 April 2019.
  22. ^ "Bangladesh faces growing strain in Rohingya crisis". 13 December 2017. Retrieved 1 April 2019.
  23. ^ "'Tis but a modest migration proposal". 19 September 2015. Retrieved 1 April 2019.
  24. ^ "Fiction: A Transgressive Art". January 2016. Retrieved 1 April 2019.
  25. ^ "In Bangladesh: Direct Control of Media Trumps Fake News". 17 December 2018. Retrieved 1 April 2019.
  26. ^ "Kazi Anis Ahmed new PEN Bangladesh president". Dhaka Tribune. 11 July 2021. Retrieved 7 August 2021.
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