After years working in the World Bank’s Result Measurement Unit, I found myself confronting an uncomfortable reality: development aid to impoverished countries primarily benefits aid facilitators, donors, and a select few wealthy clients—rarely empowering those it’s meant to help on the ground.
Paraphrasing Voltaire, other countries have banks, but the World Bank as an institution owns countries. One of my main scholarly findings is that the World Bank’s private sector development in Bangladesh relies on dual hegemony, which I articulate as an alliance between the new Bangladeshi political and economic elite and the Western international aid/development industry. I argue that dual hegemony functions in such a way that it erodes the Bangladeshi middle-class and reinforces class and caste differences through the privatization of the public sector and greater fragmentation of civil society.
My novel, Double Truths, emerged from this realization. It explores the World Bank through narratives designed to resonate with Canadian taxpayers, examining global development complexities alongside themes of identity, love, loss, and belonging in post-colonial South Asia. The novel builds upon my doctoral research and academic monograph but aims to reach general audiences by illustrating how development aid so often fails those it’s intended to serve.
Why Fiction? When Academic Papers Put People to Sleep
“My mother told me my dissertation was quite a cure for her insomnia.”
This isn’t just a joke—it reveals a fundamental truth about academic writing. When my dissertation was published as a monograph and I asked my high school friends to read it, they started ghosting me. The question that burned inside me—why development aid benefits everyone except those it’s meant to help—deserved a wider audience. The taxpayers funding these massive international institutions deserve to know the truth.
I discovered Saidiya Hartman’s “critical fabulation” methodology, which combines contemporary history with fictional narrative to reach regular people. A version of this approach allowed me to translate complex development issues into human stories that resonate emotionally. But this transformation didn’t come easily—Double Truths arrived after 100 failures from the last 13 years.
Inside the World Bank: A System of “Double Truths”
The novel exposes uncomfortable realities about how international development organizations operate. In one passage, I describe consultancy at the World Bank as being “like drug trafficking where contacts are everything. There’s a direct link to the presence of overrated and overpriced consultants in the office” (p. 81-82).
The disconnect between Western ideals and their implementation abroad becomes starkly evident: “…there is a 180-degree difference between the American corporate sector in America and an American-run international development bureaucracy in a developing country. What they teach in their own universities, those exact same teachers apply the opposite in our poor countries…” (p. 221).
Throughout the narrative, I confront the continuing legacy of colonialism: “Colonization robbed education and raped civilization in this part of the world, but people still managed to keep their natural abilities in mathematics and mechanics” (p. 49). Indeed, as another character observes, “Colonization hasn’t ended; it simply has a new face” (p. 119).
The Personal Journey: Identity Across Borders
Double Truths is fundamentally about the journey of postcolonial reconstruction and discovery. The protagonist, Asif, initially believes he has the answers but gradually realizes his supposed certainty is built on shifting sand. His transformation begins with this recognition, and through surrender, he discovers something profound: self-acceptance blooms not from having all the answers, but from being at peace with the questions.
Asif’s search for identity spans continents as he migrates from Bangladesh to study in the United States, then back to Bangladesh, and finally to Canada. This multi-directional migration reflects the complicated reality many face in our globalized world—belonging nowhere and everywhere simultaneously.
Love Across Cultural Divides
Woven through Asif’s professional journey is his equally complex romantic life. His relationships—particularly with Anushka in Bangladesh and Layne, a young woman from a wealthy family in the American south—reveal the challenges of love across differences in ethnicity, class, and skin color.
These relationships expose both universal human connections and unique cultural dynamics. When people from different backgrounds form relationships, they discover shared emotional experiences that transcend cultural boundaries while being enriched by distinct perspectives each person brings.
Yet social and structural inequalities—racism, classism, and colourism—create real obstacles. Family expectations, cultural misunderstandings, and societal prejudices add layers of complexity. That urge partners must navigate different communication styles, value systems, and expectations about gender roles and family dynamics.
The Growing Impact
I’m humbled by the growing interest in Double Truths across Canada and Europe and beyond. The International Institute for Asian Studies in the Netherlands recently featured the novel in a podcast, alongside my ongoing scholarly work intersecting development and step migration with racialized Muslim youth and mental health across gender streams in the Greater Toronto Area.
The book’s UK publisher, Kantara Press, has commissioned the next print edition and an audiobook recording this summer, expanding its reach to new audiences.
Fiction as Truth-Telling
Transitioning from social science writing to fiction presented unique challenges. In academic work, we present arguments, concepts, and evidence with clear structure and citations. Fiction requires conveying meaning through implicit sentences, character actions, and dramatic scenes rather than direct exposition. Readers must remain curious about what happens next, interpret events, and draw their own conclusions.
This duality of writing comes with consequences beyond the page. Once, while absorbed in writing, “I received a call from my wife, not so in a happy tone saying, ‘You forgot to pick up the kids from the school.'”
Yet despite these challenges, fiction has allowed me to tell truths that academic writing could not—to expose the “double truths” of international development and invite readers into a more nuanced understanding of how these systems actually work. My hope is that through Asif’s story, readers will begin questioning the narratives they’ve been told about global development and consider what true empowerment might actually look like.
