The Shaytan Bride: A Bangladeshi Canadian Memoir of Desire and Faith

Product Description

The true story of how one Muslim woman shaped her own fate and escaped her forced wedding.

Sumaiya Matin was never sure if the story of the Shaytan Bride was truth or myth. When she moved at age six from Dhaka, Bangladesh, to Thunder Bay, Ontario, recollections of this devilish bride followed her. At first, the Shaytan Bride seemed to be the monster of fairy tales, a woman possessed or seduced by a jinni. But everything changes during a family trip to Bangladesh, and in the weeks leading to Sumaiya’s own forced wedding, she discovers that the story ― and the bride herself ― are much closer than they seem.

The Shaytan Bride is the true coming-of-age story of a girl navigating desire and faith. Through her journey into adulthood, she battles herself and her circumstances to differentiate between destiny and free will. Sumaiya Matin’s life in love and violence is a testament to one woman’s strength as she faces the complicated fallout of her decisions.

A RARE MACHINES BOOK

Review

The Shaytan Bride is a powerful and extraordinary account of a young woman’s journey of finding herself as she navigates through love and violence, trauma and healing, and faith and family. Through beautiful, lyrical language, Sumaiya invites us into some of the personal moments of her life and the depths of her heart, sharing her experience of being forced into a marriage for falling in love with someone her family did not accept, and how she forges her path and emerges triumphant, self-assured and transformed. Rich with historical, political references and concepts of Islamic spirituality, this book beautifully contextualizes the experience of one individual within the larger socio-political landscape of post-colonial South Asia and neo-colonial North America. A must-read! ―
Silmy Abdullah, author of Home of the Floating Lily

Sensuous and affecting,
The Shaytan Bride wrestles with the enduring questions of how one might reconcile duty with desire, divine will with personal agency. Sumaiya Matin asks us to accept, with tenderness, all the earnest mistakes we have made, and also those mistakes others have made at our expense. Her story stays with you long after you’ve closed the pages of this remarkable memoir. ―
Shyam Selvadurai, author of Funny Boy

Matin’s struggle to balance her faith and her love beget philosophical questions and poetic epiphanies that reverberate in the reader’s mind. ―
Chatelaine

The Shaytan Bride is an utterly compelling memoir of how we forge a path between the Scylla and Charybdis of tradition and modernity; obligation and independence. Written in searing prose that commands one’s attention, this brave book heralds the arrival of a bright new literary voice. ―
Arif Anwar, author of The Storm

The Shaytan Bride is a powerful look at the price women pay for living their truth. With breathtaking lyricism, Sumaiya carries readers through her harrowing journey of coming back to herself. A must-read. ―
Julie S. Lalonde, author of Resilience is Futile: The Life and Death and Life of Julie S. Lalonde

Sumaiya Matin’s
The Shaytan Bride is a stunning testament to what it means to be a South Asian Muslim woman navigating the intersections of faith, tradition, colonialism, and classism. Matin writes with the grace and fire of a poet, weaving myth and lived experience into an account that intentionally avoids the lure of false dichotomies. While not a rescue story,
The Shaytan Bride is a compelling tale of what happens when the stories we’ve been told and those we tell ourselves have the power to sink us or save us. ―
Sheniz Janmohamed, author of Reminders on the Path

Matin weaves words poetically making the Bangladeshi Muslim woman’s experience accessible and relatable to the reader. A poignantly told coming of age tale,
The Shaytan Bride’s exploration of familial obligation coupled with a passion for independence perceived as rebellion, makes this book a must-read for a widespread audience. ―
Taslim Burk