January 14, 2021
Shashi Tharoor Looks Through A Glass Darkly, For Democracy
This is a must-read book for anyone worried about the vulnerability of democracy in our time and the rise of authoritarian governments everywhere.
January 9, 2021
A Bangladeshi Babu Like No Other
Numair Atif Choudhury’s Babu Bangladesh is a tour de force of a novel. Exuberant, extravagant, learned, zany, ingenious, whimsical, irreverent and provocative, this is a work of amazing merit.
August 15, 2020
July 1, 2020
The road to DU’s opening day
In these pandemic-plagued times, ceremonies commemorating the beginning of the celebrations of the University of Dhaka (or DU) that were to culminate in July 1, 2021 have been scaled down...
May 18, 2020
Rest in Peace, Dear Aniusuzzaman Sir
It was probably on a day in the second week of March that I last saw and heard professor Anisuzzaman—our Anisuzzaman sir—speak publicly.
May 9, 2020
Friends Forever in a Happening Place!
There were six of us, bosom buddies who had studied together in the same school and college, friends for years—“good” boys. And there were the same number of them, if not more, from the same Dhaka...
April 25, 2020
London’s 17th-century plague and our global pandemic
Art has always been both a mirror of and a balm for human experience through disaster. In this short series, an author of Daily Star Books—our book publishing imprint—will periodically explore a...
March 26, 2020
Bangabandhu’s Vision of Independence
One of the most striking characteristics evident in The Unfinished Memoirs is how the young Sheikh Mujibur Rahman showed
March 14, 2020
Bangabandhu, the 1947 Partition and Healing its Wounds
In the intellectual evolution of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the partition of the subcontinent in 1947 played a decisive role.
January 18, 2020
SMI—a Tribute!
To think of Syed Manzoorul Islam—Manzoor bhai to me (but let me call him SMI in the rest of this piece!) —is to think of someone always in motion, whether in the everyday world we inhabit, or the...