Hellfire is my first translated read of the year and what a thought-provoking and phenomenal read it is! This book was originally written in Bengali and the author is Bangladeshi.

Hellfire is a story of a controlling mother and her two adult daughters in their late 30s. Their mother has always controlled them. They never went out of the house on their own. So when the elder sister, Lovely, goes out of the house alone for the first time, on her 40th birthday, the house is in chaos. Farida Khanam, the mother, couldn’t understand why she gave her permission to Lovely to go out. And the younger sister, Beauty, couldn’t understand how her sister was allowed to go out of the house though she herself never got that chance. What we see afterwards, in a span of 24 hours, is a family full of chaos and secrets.

The story is character oriented and in Farida, we see a woman who wanted to be the matriarch of the family. The decisions she took to protect her family and her daughters, the choices she made, and the sacrifices she gave to be what she was today. But at the same time, the story also shows how it resulted in failure and collateral damage because of her need to be in power.

The setting is of Bangladesh so it does feels similar to Indian household. Most of the Indian mothers are controlling too but I can’t imagine a mother being this much control-freak