The Difficult Bride

Zaineen, a young woman from an upper-class Dhaka family, prepares for her wedding by following the traditional bridal beauty rituals expected of the women in her family. Isolated in a bubble of wealth, Zaineen starts to lose her grip on her sanity, as the scrutiny over her body begins to elicit strange visions and corporeal reactions. But her attempts to escape from her ivory tower and blend in on the city streets only illuminate the far harsher realities other women experience—realities from which Zaineen’s privilege has long shielded her.

The beauty and horror of tradition is made manifest in Rubaiyat Hossain’s sharp, absurdist critique of the policing of women’s bodies across social structures in contemporary Bangladesh. The Difficult Bride thrives in its dichotomies, following a protagonist at once deeply empathetic yet blinded by the ignorance of entitlement, in a physical and psychological meditation on perceptions of freedom.