Sheba Prokashoni

Sheba Prokashoni (Bengali: সেবা প্রকাশনী) is a publishing house in Dhaka, Bangladesh. It was founded by Qazi Anwar Hussain. Its books are aimed at young Bangladeshi readers, and includes translations of Western literary classics into the Bengali language.

Sheba Prokashoni was founded in May, 1963. Its name may have derived from the first syllables of Shegun Bagan, now renamed as Shegun Bagicha, the neighbourhood of Dhaka city where its offices are located. The literal meaning of "Sheba" is "service."

Sheba's focus, from its inception, has been to produce mass-market popular Bengali paperbacks that are both attractively-written and affordably priced. Its first successful product was Kuasha (Kuasha-1, first edition June 1964 ), a short-lived modern-Robin Hood style adventure series. This was closely followed by the Masud Rana, a spy-thriller series, one of Sheba's most enduring and popular imprints.

These books described the adventures of its eponymous hero Masud Rana, an international spy of Bangladeshi origin, closely resembling James Bond in his expertise with weapons and women. Although the author of the series is Qazi Anwar Hussain, Hossain liberally borrows plot lines from popular Western spy thrillers. Nonetheless, the series was a boon for young people in post-war Bangladesh, who had few entertainment alternatives in an era pre-dating video games, cable TV and the internet. The books caused concern among some middle-class parents because of their occasional racy content, and reading Masud Rana was an activity often frowned upon. The series eventually ran to well over a hundred individual titles. There was even a Bengali action thriller movie based on Masud Rana's character. The title was also Masud Rana. It came out in 1975 with famous actor Sohel Rana (real name:Masud Parvez) in the lead role of Masud Rana. It was the first film for Sohel Rana as a lead actor.

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