Bangladeshi English literature

Bangladeshi English literature (BEL) refers to the body of literary work written in the English language in Bangladesh and the Bangladeshi diaspora. English has been spoken and written in the territory of modern-day Bangladesh for over three centuries, with the country once forming part of the Bengal Presidency in the British Empire.

Early prominent Bengali writers in English included Begum Rokeya and Rabindranath Tagore. Modern Bangladeshi writers include Tahmima Anam, Kaiser Haq, K. Anis Ahmed, Razia Khan, Neamat Imam, Monica Ali and Zia Haider Rahman.

As a category, Bangladeshi writing in English comes under the broader realm of postcolonial literature- the literature from previously colonized nations such as Bangladesh.

Sake Dean Mahomed, an 18th-century immigrant to the United Kingdom from Bengal, was the first South Asian to write a book in English titled The Travels of Dean Mahomet; the book was published in 1793 in England. Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay (1838–1894) wrote "Rajmohan's Wife", the first English novel written by a Bengali native in British India, which was published in 1864. Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941), who lived for decades in what is now Bangladesh, wrote in Bengali and English. Tagore's own English translation of his celebrated work Gitanjali led to him being awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1913.

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