Shaheedul Jahir distinguished himself with his surrealist approach to fiction. He wrote both short stories and novels. He started to write in the late-1970s. His first published story "Bhalobasah" (tr. "Love"), clearly reflected the influence of the Bengali novelist Syed Waliullah. His first book of short stories, published in 1985, "Parapar", bore his tendency to portray the human character in an intricate language in the perspective of a thin storyline. He has been said to be a magic-realist in line with Latin American writers and Zahir has been termed the new Marquez of Bangladesh. However, he admitted the influence of two contemporary novelist, namely Syed Shamsul Haque and Akhtaruzzaman Elias, in addition to Syed Waliullah. Thematically, the storylines of a number of stories bear the influence of Marxist paradigm. Also, in many novels and stories, he has chosen the perspective of 1971, the year of the liberation war of Bangladesh. He also translated a few stories from English.