The book as a whole is a rigorously pursued exercise in the close reading of a fascinating and diverse array of modern texts that aren't quite in the category of the canonical mainstream.

Kazi Nazrul Islam (1899-1976) has been customarily characterized as a rebel poet, particularly, if not exclusively, because of his 1922 poem called “Bidrohi” (the Rebel)—a poem that fiercely stages his political, linguistic, even metrical rebellion all at once.