G H Habib

G H Habib (born 1967), full name Golam Hossain Habib, is a Bangladeshi writer, translator and academic. He has translated works of international literature into Bengali, including Gabriel García Márquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude, Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose, Jostein Gaarder's Sophie's World, and Isaac Asimov's Foundation. He received the Bangla Academy Literary Award in 2024 for translation.

Early life and education

Habib was born in 1967 in Dhaka, Bangladesh. He studied at Shaheed Abu Taleb High School and later attended Mirzapur Cadet College, from where he completed his secondary and higher secondary education. He studied English at Jahangirnagar University, where he completed his bachelor's and master's degrees.

Career

Habib began his career in journalism. He later became a teacher in the Department of English at the University of Chittagong.

He has worked as a literary translator alongside his academic career. His work has included translations of fiction, literary criticism and works dealing with language and knowledge.

Habib has translated works by writers including Gabriel García Márquez, Umberto Eco, Jostein Gaarder, Isaac Asimov, Roland Barthes, Italo Calvino and Amos Tutuola.

His Bengali translation of One Hundred Years of Solitude was first published at the 2000 Ekushey Book Fair, followed by a revised edition in 2001.

In a 2025 interview with The Daily Star, Habib said that translating One Hundred Years of Solitude took about five years. He worked from Gregory Rabassa's English translation because he did not know Spanish, the language of Márquez's original novel.

In a 2025 interview with Prothom Alo, Habib discussed his approach to translation and the role of translation in introducing international literature, literary theory and other fields of knowledge to Bengali readers.