The Unfinished Memoirs

Book excerpt: "When Sheikh Mujibur Rahman's diaries came to light in 2004, it was an indisputably historic event. His daughter, Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheik Hasina, had the notebooks -- their pages by then brittle and discoloured -- carefully transcribed and later translated from Bengali into English. Written during Sheikh Mujibur Rahman's sojourns in jail as a state prisoner between 1967 and 1969, they begin with his recollections of his days as a student activist in the run-up to the movement for Pakistan in the early 1940s. They cover the Bengali language movement, the first stirrings of the movement for Bangladesh independence and self-rule, and powerfully convey the great uncertainties as well as the great hopes that dominated the time. The last notebook ends with the events accompanying the struggle for democratic rights in 1955." --