Ami-ee Misir Ali

Ami-ee Misir Ali (I Am Misir Ali) is part of Humayun Ahmed’s long-running Misir Ali series, which features one of his most original characters — a quiet, pipe-smoking parapsychology professor at Dhaka University who investigates the strange and the inexplicable. Where Himu, Humayun’s other famous character, is wild and barefoot, Misir Ali is methodical, sceptical, and uncomfortable with attention.

The Misir Ali books are often described as Bangladeshi mystery, but that label undersells them. The cases that come to him are not always crimes — sometimes they are dreams that should not be possible, sometimes a child who knows things they cannot have learned, sometimes a coincidence that turns out to be no coincidence at all. Misir Ali tries to find rational explanations, and Humayun Ahmed leaves the reader genuinely unsure whether the rational explanation will hold.

Ami-ee Misir Ali is one of the strongest entries in the series for that reason. It works as a mystery, as a quiet psychological study, and as a portrait of an unusually thoughtful man trying to make sense of a world that keeps refusing to behave.