I Spy
The pieces compiled here are largely anecdotal. Some of them are re-membered or re-visited reveries. Some of them are ready responses to events at hand. Some of them were customized to go along with the theme of the lifestyle magazine ICE Today where they were first printed as a regular column. These essays were written while the author was dividing his time between London, Stockholm and Dhaka. Hence, the theme of travel features prominently in these works. To some extent, all of them involve travelling: either cerebral , virtual or real.
Dr. Shamsad Mortuza teaches English at the University of Dhaka. He remains an adjunct professor and advisor in the Department of English and Humanities at the University of Liberal Arts Bangladesh. He has taught at many universities including Jahangirnagar University, where he was the Chair of the Department of English between 2005 and 2008. Dr. Mortuza is a Fulbright scholar who did his MA in American Indian Studies from the University of Arizona. He went to Birkbeck College, University of London to work for his PhD. His doctoral thesis The Figure of the Shaman in Contemporary British Poetry, was published by Cambridge Scholars Publishers, UK in 2013. As a senior visiting Fulbright postdoctoral Fellow, he attended University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) to research on the idea of the occult in literature. He is a member of the editorial board of Six Seasons Review. Dr. Mortuza is married to Shahnaz Gazi, a career diplomat, and is blessed with a teenage daughter, Shamael Mortuza Arshi.