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Rana Plaza's Total Eclipse
Paperback
Publisher: Independently Published
Published: Nov 5 2026
Pages: 258
Weight: 0.60
Height: 0.64 Width: 5.50 Depth: 8.50
Language: English
On the morning of April 24, 2013, a cracked, badly built factory complex in Savar, Bangladesh, collapsed on the garment workers inside it. More than 1,100 people died. RANA PLAZA'S TOTAL ECLIPSE asks what happens to the living, to the families who lost sons, daughters and breadwinners, and to a country still waiting for justice.
The novel opens with a nightmare. A former part-owner of Rana Plaza is visited in his sleep by the dead, who want to know why the powerful sleep so comfortably while the truth is buried. Then the story turns to the survivors, and to one young woman whose heart is about to be tested.
Chandra is a bright, warm, quick-witted university student in Dhaka. When her beloved cousin Rup, a popular young professor, is lost in the chaos surrounding the disaster, his mother collapses into grief and confusion. The family turns to a gentle, gifted young psychiatrist, Dr. Sajon, and Chandra's world begins to shift.
Soon three men are circling her life. Tinish is a charming, sharp-tongued lawyer who woos her with poetry, teasing and endless patience. Asif is an engineer home from America, the son of her father's oldest friend, and the match her family quietly hopes for. And there is Sajon, whose calm presence unsettles her in ways she cannot explain. Through it all, Chandra keeps hearing the faint chime of an anklet, the echo of Padmini, a courtesan from an old village legend who danced herself to death for love.
That legend is only one of the stories woven through the book. On a long visit to her grandmother's village, Chandra and her best friend Nishi, who is recovering from a broken marriage, listen to folk tales told after dark: the ruined landlord's palace of Manibari, its secret loves and cruel bargains, and a flute player whose music no girl could ignore. Old and new, folk story and headline, begin to echo each other.
Rich with Bengali food, songs, weddings, rivers and monsoon storms, this is a novel of friendship, mourning, family duty and first love. It moves between laughter and tears, from crowded Dhaka cafes to quiet village courtyards. And as a cyclone gathers on a moonless night, Chandra must finally answer the question her heart has been asking all along.
A moving story of grief, courage and love, RANA PLAZA'S TOTAL ECLIPSE will appeal to readers of South Asian fiction, Bengali literature in English, family sagas and romance with a strong sense of place and conscience.
Step into a Dhaka you may not know, and remember the people the headlines left behind.
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