What do you think?
Rate this book
Up in the Main House & Other Stories
"Meticulously constructed in both language and emotion, Zaman’s stories sneak up on the reader and consistently deliver." –Publishers Weekly, Starred Review
Up in the main house, servants have worked for decades watching the city rise around it, feeling like part of the family but knowing they aren’t.
Nadeem Zaman’s new collection of eight stories set in contemporary Dhaka explore the inner lives of the cooks and butlers, nightwatchmen and peons – people who have spent decades working for the same family, in the same house. Arranged marriages are negotiated, favors asked, the social cues a subtle dance. The daily itineraries must run like clockwork for the rich and well off who have their own problems, but in Nadeem's stories they appear thin and forever insecure, a byproduct of the real lives being lived around them. There are digressions, too, big ones like the interlopers and prowlers, petty thieves, and calculated con men, and small ones, like the servant woman who locks herself in the master bedroom while the family is away and the night guard who wonders, if there is always the family, does he have one of his own?
Beautifully compelling and quietly powerful, Zaman’s stories capture an old way of life and ask what’s next?
Up in the main house, servants have worked for decades watching the city rise around it, feeling like part of the family but knowing they aren’t.
Nadeem Zaman’s new collection of eight stories set in contemporary Dhaka explore the inner lives of the cooks and butlers, nightwatchmen and peons – people who have spent decades working for the same family, in the same house. Arranged marriages are negotiated, favors asked, the social cues a subtle dance. The daily itineraries must run like clockwork for the rich and well off who have their own problems, but in Nadeem's stories they appear thin and forever insecure, a byproduct of the real lives being lived around them. There are digressions, too, big ones like the interlopers and prowlers, petty thieves, and calculated con men, and small ones, like the servant woman who locks herself in the master bedroom while the family is away and the night guard who wonders, if there is always the family, does he have one of his own?
Beautifully compelling and quietly powerful, Zaman’s stories capture an old way of life and ask what’s next?
- GenresShort StoriesFiction
159 pages, Kindle Edition
Published November 5, 2019
6 people are currently reading
80 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
February 18, 2020
That last story 😭. My heart. 4.5 ⭐.
Update: February 18, 2020
Zaman slips the reader into these interconnected stories set in Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh. Most of the characters centred are of lower status— caretakers, cooks, security guards—alongside barely middle class office workers who suffer pay cuts after a corporate takeover by a US company, or a wastrel offspring of an established family.
I loved the stories' elusive, somewhat precarious quality. Open ended narratives rarely resolved, characters we leave on the brink, on the verge of merging into something bigger, or perhaps tumbling into disaster? Or ending in a sorrowful close.
Bangladesh's history, particular religious and political landscape, and gender norms suffuse all interactions like air. Zaman includes enough for the interested reader who wants to know more. Issues of power, justice, money, and alliance are reflected in a married couple's abusive relationship or engagement negotiations as marriage operates as a societal nucleus.
Gender is binary and queerness present in only one story but Zaman excels at delineating how intersectional power and privilege is—how one is centred and marginalised in several concurrent circumstances.
I don't understand this book's 3.29 ⭐ rating here. On the spectrum it leans closer to the 4 ⭐ star end of the 4.5 ⭐—iz my Maths don't argue wid me 😄—but I'm changing it to 5 stars to counter other readers' bad taste.
Update: February 18, 2020
Zaman slips the reader into these interconnected stories set in Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh. Most of the characters centred are of lower status— caretakers, cooks, security guards—alongside barely middle class office workers who suffer pay cuts after a corporate takeover by a US company, or a wastrel offspring of an established family.
I loved the stories' elusive, somewhat precarious quality. Open ended narratives rarely resolved, characters we leave on the brink, on the verge of merging into something bigger, or perhaps tumbling into disaster? Or ending in a sorrowful close.
Bangladesh's history, particular religious and political landscape, and gender norms suffuse all interactions like air. Zaman includes enough for the interested reader who wants to know more. Issues of power, justice, money, and alliance are reflected in a married couple's abusive relationship or engagement negotiations as marriage operates as a societal nucleus.
Gender is binary and queerness present in only one story but Zaman excels at delineating how intersectional power and privilege is—how one is centred and marginalised in several concurrent circumstances.
I don't understand this book's 3.29 ⭐ rating here. On the spectrum it leans closer to the 4 ⭐ star end of the 4.5 ⭐—iz my Maths don't argue wid me 😄—but I'm changing it to 5 stars to counter other readers' bad taste.
February 19, 2020
They were fine, I suppose. A little boring. Really all just slice of life stuff with a similar moral. The writing was excellent, but I found none of the characters or stories compelling.
November 12, 2023
I'm convinced short stories do not demonstrate Zaman's storycrafting skills.
This collection of 7 stories generally felt incomplete. "The Father and the Judge" is the only one that came close to having a sense of completion and I like it the most of the set. The remainder had no resolution or climax, or had some lukewarm/pallid closure. "The Forced Witness" might have had some climax if we infer what happened.
Often I felt like something was missing in terms of the story. The writing (at the sentence and paragraph level) is technically very solid. But the story construction has gaps that left me confused and unsatisfied.
I don't know if the fuller format of a novel would showcase Zaman better.
This collection of 7 stories generally felt incomplete. "The Father and the Judge" is the only one that came close to having a sense of completion and I like it the most of the set. The remainder had no resolution or climax, or had some lukewarm/pallid closure. "The Forced Witness" might have had some climax if we infer what happened.
Often I felt like something was missing in terms of the story. The writing (at the sentence and paragraph level) is technically very solid. But the story construction has gaps that left me confused and unsatisfied.
I don't know if the fuller format of a novel would showcase Zaman better.
November 28, 2019
"A remarkable collection of stories that captures, in dense, atomic detail, the warp and weft of Dhaka's tapestry of lives. Zaman's work invites comparison to Arvind Adiga's White Tiger for its resolute, unsentimental depiction of the frozen web of hierarchical power and societal expectations in which we find ourselves trapped, whether we are master or servant, hero or villain."
March 7, 2020
Fantastic and fascinating collection of short stories set in Dhaka.
March 14, 2020
not for me. pretty boring stories about women being treated terribly by men. ok, dude. only ready half and gave up.
August 4, 2024
Almost every story felt unfinished, as there is no resolution to the problems faced in each story. I understand the lack of conclusion in the stories as a choice, but it resulted in a very unfulfilling collection. The writing is very good and the premise of the stories compelling, but I began to get bored after reading a couple because I knew no resolution would be forthcoming. I had to really push myself to finish the collection, I only did so because of a reading challenge I’m participating in.
September 28, 2020
I really liked how all stories are centered around a single family or household. Truly a charming collection
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews