বাংলা 
English 
Abdullah Abu Sayeed was a Bangladeshi educationist, littérateur and social activist. He was the founder and chairman of Bishwo Shahitto Kendro (World Literature Centre), a non-profit organisation that promotes the study of literature, the habit of reading and progressive ideas.
He gained recognition in the sixties as a promising poet. In that period he also contributed as a critic and literary editor. His life's notable achievement is Bishwo Shahitto Kendro, which has been engaged for forty years in the work of creating 'enlightened people' in Bangladesh. In 2004 he received the Ramon Magsaysay Award.
For his contribution to the spread of non-formal education in Bangladesh, the government of Bangladesh honoured him in 2005 with the Ekushey Padak, the country's second-highest civilian honour. For his contribution to the essay he received the Bangla Academy Award in 2012. In the 1970s he achieved special popularity as a television presenter.
Abdullah Abu Sayeed was born on 25 July 1939 at Park Circus in Kolkata. His ancestral home is in Kamargati village under Kachua upazila of Bagerhat district. His father Azimuddin Ahmed was a college teacher. In 1955 he passed the secondary examination from Pabna District School, in 1957 completed higher secondary from Prafullachandra College in Bagerhat, and was admitted to the Department of Bengali at the University of Dhaka. He obtained his bachelor's degree from the same university in 1960 and his master's degree in 1961.
Abu Sayeed began his teaching life in 1961 by joining Horgonga College in Munshiganj as a part-time lecturer. Later he taught for some time at Sylhet Women's College. On 1 April 1962 he began his government service career by joining Rajshahi College as a lecturer. After teaching there for five months, he joined the Intermediate Technical College in Dhaka (now the Government Science College). At this college he served as acting principal for two years. His age at the time was only twenty-three. Besides, he taught Bengali as a part-time teacher in the Department of Civil Engineering of the Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology (BUET).
After that, at the invitation of Jalaluddin Ahmed, then principal of Dhaka College, he joined there. When Abu Sayeed joined Dhaka College, the head of the college's Bengali department was the fiction writer and prose author Shawkat Osman.
He led the new-current literary movement that took place in Bangladesh in the sixties. Through editing the literary journal Konthoswar, for one decade he gave leadership and direction to the young literary journey of that era, keeping it united and vigorous. During this period he also presented programmes on Bangladeshi television for some time.
Abu Sayeed founded Bishwo Shahitto Kendro in 1978. Realising the inadequacy of libraries in Bangladesh, Bishwo Shahitto Kendro began its mobile library programme in 1998.
Abu Sayeed wrote quite a few essays, novels and poems in the 1960s. Besides, his speech-carrying book Brahmaner Barir Kakatua (The Parrot of the Brahmin's House) is extremely famous. Another is the essay collection Songstha O Bangali (Organisation and the Bengali).
Awards
- 2004: Ramon Magsaysay Award
- 2005: Ekushey Padak for contribution to education.
- 2012: Bangla Academy Award for contribution to the essay.
- 2017: Palmokon-17 honour from the Bangladesh Lung Foundation.
