A spy is born in Dhaka
Masud Rana is the most famous fictional secret agent in Bengali literature, created by writer and publisher Qazi Anwar Hussain. The character first appeared in 1966, published under Hussain's own house, Sheba Prokashoni. Rana is imagined as a former major of the Bangladesh Army who becomes a counter-intelligence agent, operating an investigation firm called Rana Agency as a cover for his missions around the world.
From the beginning the series wore its influences openly. Rana was conceived in the spirit of the great Cold War spy heroes, and comparisons to Ian Fleming's James Bond followed the character throughout his life. Yet the books quickly found their own Bengali voice, blending espionage, action, romance and travel into fast, cinematic storytelling that felt fresh to readers in the region.
The man behind the legend
Qazi Anwar Hussain was born on 19 July 1936 in Dhaka. In 1963 he founded the publishing house that would become Sheba Prokashoni, and with it he set out to give Bengali readers popular fiction on a scale no one had attempted before. Masud Rana was his signature creation, but he built an entire universe of genre reading around it.
Hussain remained the guiding force of the enterprise for decades, editing, translating and shaping the house style even as the workload grew far beyond one person. He continued to be identified with Masud Rana until his death on 19 January 2022, at the age of 85. His passing was marked across Bangladeshi media as the loss of a national literary institution.
How the books were made
As the series expanded to hundreds of titles, Hussain drew on a team of writers who worked within the Masud Rana formula. Many adventures were adapted or freely reworked from Western thrillers, while others were original. This studio-style production is part of why the series could sustain a steady stream of new novels for so long. It also became the subject of public discussion about authorship and credit, most notably involving longtime contributing writer Sheikh Abdul Hakim, whose claim over volumes he had written was recognised in a copyright ruling in 2021.
A wider universe
Sheba Prokashoni was never only about Rana. The same house gave Bengali readers the Kuasha adventure series, the hugely popular teen-detective series Tin Goyenda, translated Western classics, and mystery magazines such as Rahasya Patrika. For generations of Bangladeshi young people, growing up before cable television and the internet, these paperbacks were a first doorway into thrillers, detective fiction and world adventure.
Masud Rana also reached the screen. A 1974 film adaptation, directed by and starring Sohel Rana (Masud Parvez), brought the agent to cinemas, and later projects continued to try to translate the character's appeal to film. Whatever the medium, the source of the magic stayed the same: a Dhaka publisher who believed Bengali readers deserved their own globe-trotting hero, and delivered one who has now entertained readers for well over half a century.