A Fish Book That Travelled Beyond Its Community
How a British-Bangladeshi reference book is carrying food, culture and nutritional knowledge around the world
When we talk about books, we often measure success by one question:
How many copies did it sell?
But that is not the only measure of whether a book matters.
Sometimes a book's importance lies in a different question:
What knowledge would be missing if nobody had written it?
That is the story behind my book, Bangladeshi Fishes Nutritional Values & Some British Favourites.
Published by MAPublisher in 2024, the 200-page book developed an idea that had already begun with my earlier Bangladeshi Fishes Basic Guide. The first book was designed to help identify Bangladeshi fish and reconnect later generations of British Bangladeshis with a food culture that was increasingly in danger of becoming disconnected from language, memory and everyday knowledge.
The newer book takes that journey much further.
It asks not simply:
What is this fish called?
But also:
What does it contain? What nutritional value does it have? How might it fit into a modern diet? How does traditional Bangladeshi knowledge connect with contemporary concerns about health and food?
And perhaps most importantly:
What happens when a community's traditional food knowledge is no longer automatically passed from one generation to the next?
From the fish market to the fourth generation
For many British Bangladeshis, fish is much more than food.
It is connected to family.
It is connected to Sylhet.
It is connected to Bangladesh.
It is connected to memories of parents and grandparents.
It is connected to language.
And yet language changes.
For increasing numbers of British Bangladeshis, Bengali or Sylheti is no longer the strongest language. English has become the first language, while the names, stories and knowledge surrounding traditional foods can gradually become more distant.
You may know the taste of a fish.
You may recognise it when it appears on the family table.
But do you know its English name?
Do you know its nutritional profile?
Do you know how it compares with British fish?
Do you know which fish are oily fish?
Do you know which contain particular nutrients?
Do you know how traditional food knowledge connects with modern conversations about diet and wellbeing?
These are some of the gaps this book attempts to bridge.
Bangladeshi Fishes Nutritional Values & Some British Favourites was created as a bridge between generations, languages, cultures and food systems.
More than a fish guide
The book contains information about Bangladeshi fish alongside nutritional considerations and some British favourites.
That is significant.
Because this is not simply a nostalgic look backwards.
It is an attempt to bring traditional knowledge forward.
The book explores nutritional information and wider issues surrounding fish consumption, including areas such as healthy eating, oily fish, diabetes and other dietary considerations. Its structure demonstrates something important: traditional Bangladeshi food knowledge does not have to remain trapped in the past.
It can be investigated.
It can be documented.
It can be translated.
It can be explained in English.
And it can become accessible to future generations.
For me, that is one of the greatest benefits of independent publishing.
You do not have to wait for a major publishing company to decide that your community's knowledge is commercially fashionable.
Sometimes the community itself has to recognise:
If we do not document this knowledge, who will?
A book created for a community — but travelling beyond it
One of the most interesting discoveries from researching the book's current presence is how far it has travelled.
A book written from the perspective of British-Bangladeshi cultural and nutritional knowledge is now appearing across international bookselling platforms.
The book can be found through MAPublisher and has been listed internationally through major and specialist bookselling networks.
Its presence has extended into the United States, Australia, Europe and Asia.
Listings have appeared through retailers including Walmart in the United States, ThriftBooks, Tertulia, Booktopia in Australia, The Nile, Coupang in South Korea and European booksellers.
That matters.
Because it demonstrates that specialist community knowledge does not necessarily have to remain geographically limited to the community that inspired it.
A book about Bangladeshi fish can sit on a platform used by readers in America.
It can be available to readers in Australia.
It can appear in Asia.
It can be discovered in Europe.
That is the power of modern independent publishing.
A book may begin with a very specific community question.
But its usefulness can travel.
Who has taken notice?
The story did not begin with the 2024 nutritional book.
Its predecessor, Bangladeshi Fishes Basic Guide, has also achieved recognition beyond ordinary retail listings.
The earlier guide was included by the Swadhinata Trust among resources relating to Bengali studies and the history and experience of Bengalis in Britain.
That recognition is particularly important.
The Swadhinata Trust is associated with the preservation and promotion of British Bangladeshi history, heritage and community knowledge.
To see the earlier fish guide included amongst wider British Bengali resources reinforces an important point:
Food is heritage.
Fish names are heritage.
Language is heritage.
Knowledge of where food comes from is heritage.
Knowing what previous generations ate is heritage.
Understanding how those foods fit into modern life is heritage too.
The newer nutritional book builds upon that foundation.
It takes the subject beyond identification and towards a more detailed examination of nutritional knowledge.
The rankings question: what can we honestly say?
Books are increasingly judged by rankings.
Amazon Best Sellers Rank.
Category positions.
Customer reviews.
Star ratings.
But specialist books face a different challenge.
A book can be important without receiving hundreds of reviews.
A book can reach an international audience without appearing in a mainstream bestseller chart.
A book can fill a gap in cultural knowledge without being promoted by a major publisher.
My research found that the book currently has an Amazon UK listing and is distributed internationally. However, the publicly accessible Amazon information available during this research did not provide a reliable numerical Best Sellers Rank.
I believe honesty is important.
I would rather say:
The book is internationally discoverable and distributed, but its public Amazon ranking is not currently something I can accurately claim without direct access to the live Amazon sales data.
That does not diminish the achievement.
In many ways, the more interesting story is that an independently published specialist book has established an international retail footprint.
Why this book matters now
We live at a time when food is increasingly discussed in terms of:
- nutrition
- diabetes
- healthy eating
- processed food
- cultural diets
- sustainability
- family health
- traditional knowledge
- identity
- wellbeing
Yet the foods eaten by minority communities are often discussed far less than mainstream Western foods.
How often do mainstream nutrition guides discuss Bangladeshi freshwater fish?
How often do they explain traditional fish names to English-speaking second, third and fourth generations?
How often do they connect the cultural knowledge of Bangladesh with the realities of living in Britain?
That is where specialist community publishing has a role to play.
The knowledge already exists.
The challenge is documenting it, organising it and making it accessible.
Bangladeshi Fishes Nutritional Values & Some British Favourites is part of that process.
From Sylhet and Bangladesh to the world
There is another story behind this book.
It is the story of migration.
Families travelled from Bangladesh and Sylhet to Britain.
They brought language.
They brought religion.
They brought traditions.
They brought recipes.
They brought memories.
And they brought food.
Over generations, those traditions changed.
Children grew up British.
Languages shifted.
Food habits adapted.
Fish and chips became as familiar as traditional Bangladeshi dishes.
British supermarkets became part of everyday life.
And yet something important remained:
the connection between food and identity.
This book stands in that space between worlds.
Between Bangladesh and Britain.
Between Sylheti and English.
Between grandparents and grandchildren.
Between traditional food knowledge and modern nutritional information.
A small specialist book with a bigger purpose
I have written and published books about history, communities, identity, the Bangladeshi East End, Sylheti heritage and lived experience.
But the fish books represent something equally important.
They recognise that heritage is not only found in archives.
Heritage is also found in the kitchen.
At the fish counter.
In a market.
In the name of a fish.
In the question:
What did my grandparents call this?
And then:
What is it called in English?
And now, with the newer book:
What nutritional value does it have?
That is how cultural knowledge survives.
Not by leaving it untouched in the past.
But by giving it new relevance.
The journey continues
Bangladeshi Fishes Basic Guide opened the conversation.
Bangladeshi Fishes Nutritional Values & Some British Favourites expanded it.
The journey from identifying fish to understanding their nutritional value represents something bigger than a publishing project.
It represents an attempt to preserve knowledge while making it useful.
To respect heritage while speaking to the future.
To recognise where we came from while helping future generations understand what that knowledge means today.
And perhaps that is the greatest success of the book.
It was created from a very specific cultural need.
But it is no longer confined to one place.
It is travelling.
From Bangladesh.
From Sylhet.
From the British-Bangladeshi community.
From the East End.
And now, through international bookselling networks, further into the world.
A fish book, yes.
But also a book about memory.
Identity.
Language.
Health.
Food.
Heritage.
And the importance of ensuring that the knowledge of one generation does not disappear before the next generation has had the chance to understand it.
Bangladeshi Fishes Nutritional Values & Some British Favourites
By Mayar Akash
Published by MAPublisher
ISBN: 9781915958150
A guide connecting Bangladeshi fish, nutritional information, cultural heritage and some British favourites — created with future generations in mind.
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