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About this talk

What is the relationship between fiction and anthropology? This talk explores this question through An Anthropology of Drowning, a forthcoming book to be published by Routledge. This work of ethnographic fiction follows Ashraf Rahman, a British PhD student who travels to Dhaka, Bangladesh, to conduct fieldwork among climate refugees on the eve of his father’s funeral. As he encounters the stories of displaced people, the city itself begins to drown beneath rising waters and political crisis, while Ash himself becomes increasingly submerged in his own grief. Making the case for the possibilities of ethno-fiction, the talk considers what fiction might offer anthropology: alternative ways of representing lived experiences; unsettling conventional distinctions between fact and imagination; and asking what kinds of truths might become possible when the anthropologist becomes a character in their own story. Delwar Hussain is a writer and social anthropologist whose work explores borders, queer lives, kinship, South Asia and London’s East End. Committed to working across academic, literary and public audiences, his writing spans ethnography, essay and creative non-fiction. His new book, An Anthropology of Drowning, will be published in 2027. He is the co-founder of Brown Boyz in the Sun, a zine publisher.

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