"[1] The Sunday Guardian commented that it is "destined to be a future classic" and will be used as the "gold standard for any book which seeks to engage with South Asian politics or history.
"[2] Published in 2013 by Penguin Books India in Hamish Hamilton imprint, it presents a dark and dystopian portrait of Bangladesh under Prime Minister Sheikh Mujibur Rahman.
[3] Sheikh Mujib is commonly regarded as the Father of the Bengali Nation, the greatest hero Bangladesh has ever had, but in this novel Imam depicts him as a totalitarian ruler who distorted truth and suppressed political opposition to strengthen his tyranny.
Khaleque and Nur start earning money using the blind nationalistic fervour of their countrymen during the Bangladesh famine of 1974 when thousands of people died from starvation and Sheikh Mujib began to lose his popularity.
In the Epilogue, he is still sitting at the Shaheed Minar, the remembrance program has ended, and he decides to offer himself to the police for killing Nur Hussain.
In this novel, Imam has dealt with one of the most tumultuous and controversial phases of independent Bangladesh's history (1972–75) when the country, barely recovering from the effects of a brutal war of independence, had faced a crippling famine, poor governance and law and order problems under the notorious Rakkhi Bahini, climaxing in the abolition of multi-party democracy and an ushering in of the infamous Bangladesh Krishak Sramik Awami League (BAKSAL) dictatorship.
That period is politically a taboo subject in Bangladesh and this book presents Sheikh Mujib as an autocrat instead of what he is popularly known as: Father of the Bengali Nation.
Sheikh Mujib should pass the necessary orders to his militiamen to dig a deep trench to bury all the faint-hearted people alive, thus ushering in a new era for the intelligent to grow up with beautiful minds, and help advance this country.
In The Black Coat novel, he is seen to sing spiritual songs at the refugee camp raising his Ektara, which was his constant companion in real life.
In the first major review of The Black Coat, entitled "Father And Sons, Or The Lie of the Land" and published in Outlook India, Indian author Indrajit Hazra called the novel an "extraordinary book ... a fine work of fiction.
Imam does this in this hyper-realistic tale of fools, thugs, dangerous idealism and sanctified pretense, reminding us who have forgotten a secret function of the novel: to unsettle us, instead of just be moving."
Mint, India's business newspaper, called The Black Coat "a powerful fictional revisiting of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman's troubled legacy in Bangladesh."
"[8] On their Limelight page, Telegraph India wrote, "The Black Coat is a political and social commentary under the guise of a historical novel."
"[12] In a review entitled "From euphoria to disillusion," Bangladeshi newspaper the Daily Star called the novel "a poignant political tale."
In writing the book, it said, "Imam has shown a lot of courage in dealing with one of the most tumultuous and controversial phases of independent Bangladesh's history.
Another major article in Bangla alleged that Imam had exceeded all previous indigenous and foreign critics of Sheikh Mujib in that he had sympathised with the Islamic fundamentalists of the country by criticising the tribunal set by the government of the Awami League to try the collaborators of Pakistan during the war of independence.