Forgotten husband!After waking up in a hospital bed, Clare couldn't even remember her own name, let alone who she was married to! When Jos introduced himself as her husband, he was a complete stranger to her…. Clare couldn't deny the sparks of sexual attraction between her and Jos, but she sensed a deeper bond between them. Was it simply the love between man and wife—or something dark and dangerous? Clare was about to find out if Jos really wanted a reunion, or revenge….

Forgotten husband! After waking up in a hospital bed, Clare couldn’t even remember her own name, let alone who she was married to! When Jos introduced himself as her husband, he was a complete stranger to her... Clare couldn’t deny the sparks of sexual attraction between her and Jos, but she sensed a deeper bond between them. Was it simply the love between man and wife — or something dark and dangerous? Clare was about to find out if Jos really wanted a reunion, or revenge...

From the exiled Bangladeshi poet and internationally acclaimed author of Shame comes a delicious tale about getting even. In modern Bangladesh, Jhumur marries for love and imagines life with her husband, Haroon, will continue just as it did when they were dating. But once she crosses the threshold of Haroon’s lavish family home, Jhumur is expected to play the role of a traditional Muslim wife: head covered, eyes averted, and unable to leave the house without an escort. When she becomes pregnant, Jhumur is shocked to discover that Haroon does not believe the baby is his, demanding an immediate termination of the pregnancy. Overwhelmed by his distrust, Jhumur plots her payback in the arms of a handsome and artistic neighbor. Readers the world over will eat up this cautionary tale of love, lust, and blood ties, delivered by the award-winning “voice of humanism everywhere” (Wole Soyinka).

Vengeance permeates English Renaissance drama - for example, it crops up in all but two of Shakespeare's plays. This book explores why a supposedly forgiving Christian culture should have relished such bloodthirsty, vengeful plays. A clue lies in the plays' passion for fairness, a preoccupation suggesting widespread resentment of systemic unfairness - legal, economic, political and social. Revengers' precise equivalents - the father of two beheaded sons obliges his enemy to eat her two sons' heads - are vigilante versions of Elizabethan law, where penalties suit the crimes: thieves' hands were cut off, scolds' tongues bridled. The revengers' language of 'paying' hints at the operation of revenge in the service of economic redress. Revenge makes contact with resistance theory, justifying overthrow of tyrants, and some revengers challenge the fundamental inequity of social class. Woodbridge demonstrates how, for all their sensationalism, their macabre comedy and outlandish gore, Renaissance revenge plays do some serious cultural work.