Bangladeshi Author Publishes Debut English Novel Independently — Now Available in 14 Countries Including Japan, Canada and the United States

From Dhaka to the World: The Bangladeshi Author Who Did It Alone
By Eleanor Walsh, Arts & Culture Correspondent
London, March 2026

When Mir Ahadul Islam sat down to write his debut novel, he had no publisher behind him, no literary agent negotiating deals on his behalf, and no guarantee that anyone outside his home city of Dhaka would ever read a single word.
Today, his book is available in fourteen countries.
The Teeth Beneath — a psychological dark romance about a forensic psychologist who destroys evidence to protect the only man she was sent to investigate — was published independently on March 18, 2026. Within days it had appeared on Amazon, Apple Books, Barnes & Noble, Rakuten Kobo, Indigo Canada, Rakuten Books Japan, Porrúa Mexico, Morawa Austria, Bol.com Belgium, Casa del Libro Spain, and seven other international retail platforms.
I spoke with the author by phone from Dhaka.

Eleanor Walsh: You published this entirely without a traditional publisher. Why?
Mir Ahadul Islam: "KDP in Bangladesh wasn't accessible to me for a long time. No one told me there was another way. I figured it out myself — Draft2Digital, IngramSpark, the whole distribution system. Once I understood how it worked, I realised I didn't need permission from anyone."

Walsh: The book is in fourteen countries. Did you expect that?
Islam: "Honestly? No. I knew it was possible in theory. But seeing it live on Rakuten Japan — that was the moment it became real. Someone in Tokyo can read something I wrote in Dhaka. That still doesn't feel real to me."

Walsh: You started writing at seven years old. That's a long road to a first published book.
Islam: "Twenty years of writing things nobody read. Scripts. Songs. Stories. I kept going because I couldn't stop. Writing isn't something I chose. It's something I am. The only thing that changed this year is I stopped waiting for someone to tell me I was ready."

Walsh: The book is described as a dark romance. That's an unusual genre choice for a Bangladeshi debut author writing in English.
Islam: "That's exactly why I chose it. Nobody expects it. A Bangladeshi author writing dark romance psychological fiction in English and publishing it on Amazon the same week as authors from New York and London — that's a statement. Not just about me. About what's possible from here."

Walsh: The protagonist — Dr. Nora Voss — makes a choice that most people would consider indefensible. She destroys evidence. She protects a killer. Was that difficult to write?
Islam: "The most interesting characters are the ones who choose wrong and mean it completely. Nora doesn't stumble into what she does. She walks in with her eyes open. I wanted to write a woman who is brilliant, trained to see through deception, and uses that brilliance to rationalise her own corruption. That tension — between who she was and what she becomes — that's the whole book."

Walsh: You have a second novel already published. Nishita: The Dark Between Us came out just six days after your debut. That's an extraordinary pace.
Islam: "Nishita is Amazon exclusive. It's a dark romance set entirely in Dhaka — a three-hundred-year-old djinn living inside a Krishnachura tree in Gulshan-2, and an eighteen-year-old boy who refuses to run from her. Bengali mythology. Dark romance. Set in the streets I grew up in. I wanted to put Dhaka on the map of international fiction. Not as a backdrop. As the story itself."

Walsh: What does it mean to you — as a Bangladeshi author — to be on the same platforms as writers from the US and UK?
Islam: "It means the gatekeepers are gone. It means a kid in Dhaka with a story and a laptop and the determination to figure it out can reach the same reader in Tokyo or Toronto or London that a New York Times bestselling author can reach. The platform is level now. What you do with it is up to you."

Walsh: What's next?
Islam: "More books. More stories from this city. Dhaka has never been written about the way it deserves to be. I intend to fix that."

The Teeth Beneath is available now on Amazon Kindle ($3.99), free on Kindle Unlimited, and in paperback. Nishita: The Dark Between Us is available exclusively on Amazon.

About Mir Ahadul Islam
Mir Ahadul Islam is a Bangladeshi author of dark romance and psychological fiction. Born in Dhaka, he began writing at age seven and has written scripts, screenplays, songs and fiction across two decades. His debut Bangladeshi novel Moner Alo — the first superhero novel in Bengali literature — is available on Rokomari. The Teeth Beneath is his English-language debut. Nishita: The Dark Between Us is his second English novel. Both are available on Amazon worldwide. His website is mirahadulislam.edgeone.app
Media Contact:
Mir Ahadul Islam
mirahadulislam.edgeone.app