Boats against the current: Reconciling the Dhaka of old with the new
Nadeem Zaman’s The Inheritors retells and recontextualizes one of the most famous stories there ever was—F Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby (1925).
1y ago
Matsyanayam
Luna strode then to the river’s bank, her loose-fitting blouse and petticoat flapping in the breeze that had speedily arrived. Her nupur, fashioned from mollusk shells, sounded in the wind like wind chimes, and more so when she moved.
1y ago
Matsyanayam - A story of ancient Bengal, and the queen who lived a hundred years
And in the streets of Shonarga, Luna went about on foot, her nupur clinking against her ankles, notifying all passers-by of the good queen’s proximity.
1y ago
Loneliness, and what I gained from a Creative Writing degree
The workshops were the sessions I’d look forward to. Someone actually reading your work, studying it, telling you what you do well, telling you what you can improve on, all phrased constructively (“I like this!” was a banned phrase). If you’re pursuing writing, workshopping—on some level or another—is what you’ll need.
1y ago
‘The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power’—One series to fail them all?
What point is Lord of the Rings making in 2022? That people are racist and wage wars? The original trilogy, from two decades ago, was making that same point.
1y ago
Netflix’s ‘The Sandman’ re-creates Neil Gaiman’s world in its own image
If you didn’t read The Sandman, watch The Sandman. If you read The Sandman, don’t expect the same magic as in the pages.
1y ago
Of noodles and nostalgia
“Ever since my mom died, I cry in H Mart”, reads the stark opening line in Michelle Zauner’s 2021 memoir, Crying in H Mart (Knopf), starting the
2y ago
Killing the false woman: ‘The Harpy’ dissects parenthood, femininity, and domestic abuse
A book’s epigraph usually either leaves you droplets of hints of what’s to come or purposefully perplexes, with abstract quotes that leave you feeling rather than knowing.
2y ago
April 8, 2021
Klara and the Sun: Depths of humanity in artificial intelligence
Despite Klara and the Sun (Faber, 2021) coming out on my birthday, and soft science fiction being not only a genre I regularly read but write, I found myself with no real connection with the Nobel Prize-winning author’s latest work.
April 1, 2021
Gothic fiction writ anew in Daisy Johnson’s ‘Sisters’
One of 2020’s more positive highlights was Daisy Johnson’s stunning sophomore effort, Sisters (Riverhead Books). The novel, a Gothic-domestic drama, starts with siblings September and July in the backseat of a car, on their way to the “Settle House”.
March 18, 2021
Four new books to read this March
In July of 2013, Patricia Lockwood wrote the decade’s most immediate and pressing poem, “Rape Joke”. Already by then Lockwood had amassed prizes and praises enough to fill a few cabinets.
March 4, 2021
Night has brought him something worse: 2021’s first must-read
“The thing was that everyone knew Julita’s parents hadn’t died in any accident: Julita’s folks had disappeared. They were disappeared. They’d been disappeared”.
February 25, 2021
The spirit of sharing defines the end of February 2021
In this last week of February, a shared sense of optimism, however cautious, is pervading much of the world and indeed our own. Slowly, and now safely, more and more events and programmes are opening their doors. Book enthusiasts can enjoy the following events this week:
January 21, 2021
‘A Gift for a Ghost’: Spain’s Great New Graphic Novel
Borja González is a self-taught illustrator, and you both can and cannot tell while looking at his resplendent new work, A Gift for a Ghost (Abram ComicArts, 2020).
December 31, 2020
Daily Star Books’ Favourite Reads of 2020
Out of all the books that I had to speed through for work this year, Rumaan Alam’s Leave the World Behind was an exception.
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