Sarah Anjum Bari

Sarah Anjum Bari is Editor of Daily Star Books. Reach her at [email protected] and @wordsinteal on Twitter and Instagram.

A glimpse of the Istanbul we don’t know

Here was a woman who was but a dot amidst the throngs of people who watched the Bosphorus Bridge being opened in October 1973, as fireworks erupted over a Turkey that now seamed Asia to Europe.

2w ago

In conversation with South Asia’s preeminent literary agent, Kanishka Gupta

I always tell the authors to make subjective, qualitative decisions. So many of my authors say no to higher offers from publishing houses if they don’t feel comfortable with the publisher or editor.

4w ago

A bookstore is a time machine—Zeenat Book Supply through the ages

Last week, one of Dhaka’s oldest bookstores announced that they will be closing shop after running for 60 years

Zeenat bookstore shuts its doors after 60 years

Zeenat Book Supply, a New Market staple for book lovers since 1963, will close shop on May 1, 2023.

Piracy a main reason for New Market’s Zeenat bookstore closing down

Zeenat Book Supply, a New Market staple for book lovers since 1963, will close shop on May 1, 2023.

The Birangona in poetry and conversation

Using a Fulbright fellowship, Tarfia decided to come to Bangladesh to research the war and interview the women whom the Bangladesh government, in 1972, titled Birangona (war heroines). These interviews resulted in 'Seam' (Southern Illinois University Press, 2014).

The pleasure of knowing your neighbourhood

Safe, vibrant public spaces are so rare in Dhaka that the months from January to early March feel like a gift from the universe when the Bangla Academy comes alive with the Dhaka Lit Fest, followed by the Dhaka Art Summit and the February extravaganza of the Ekushey Boi Mela. Since 2020, the Gulshan Book Fair has added to the series of treats for those of us who crave creative festivals in this city.

A legacy of women's freedom in art

Schwartz’s narrator speaks in the choral “we”, and like a daisy chain, they connect all these women’s shared yet individual experiences of feeling closed in, being violated, feeling misunderstood by society, until they all shed their names and managed to “escap[e] the century”.

4 nonfiction books that unpack South Asian feminism with nuance

The collection comprises essays, poetry, short fiction, feature pieces, interviews, research reports, and photographs and artwork that explore the physical, psychological and political experiences of menstruation across South Asia.

The books you will meet at Dhaka Art Summit 2023

For those who are especially interested in literature in book form, the first two floors of the exhibition hold treasures.

Foreign literature is a very precious tool for peace

Daily Star Books’ panel on January 8, Day 4 of the Dhaka Lit Fest sought to take the audience to a more existential aspect of what the festival attempts to do. Who chooses which stories deserve to become books? Who chooses whether news of those books will even reach readers? Does book criticism truly help the flow and business of literature within and across national borders?

Three literary walks: Nilanjana Roy, Shehan Karunatilaka, Daisy Rockwell

With a Books page you're creating a running history of the ideas and the parallel history or the imagination of a country.

FIND US AT DHAKA LIT FEST THIS WEEK!

Media platforms that critique literature are, therefore, at the heart of the book ecosystem. They shape a book’s public perception and can bolster (or destroy) sales.

5 new books to start the new year with

Someone has to pay the price when traditions, community beliefs, and environmental issues are unheeded.

On curating Slam Poetry Nights for Dhaka Lit Fest tomorrow

The most moving part about these poetry sessions is the conversations.

Behind the scenes of the Dhaka Literary Festival 2023

Literature is our main area of interest.But we also want to highlight areas of intersection between literature and science, politics, pop culture, human rights, and new media.

Journalists need regular salaries, institutional support, says Nadeem Qadir at book launch

Qadir’s book includes insight on the origins and evolution of journalism in Bangladesh, firsthand experiences of journalists who have struggled and resigned from large media houses, research and case studies, and proposed solutions.

Unpacking the craft of creative writing

If you are reaching out to an agent, go and find out exactly what sort of work that agent publishes. Also, think in terms of what would differentiate your work with the work of 39 other authors.

In Iffat Nawaz’s debut novel, 1971 is not an open wound

Shurjo’s Clan uses magic realism to conjure Shurjomukhi’s freedom fighter uncles, who were martyred in Sylhet’s tea gardens during the 1971 Liberation War, and her grandmother, who took her own life shortly after the 1947 Partition.

Sri Lankan author Shehan Karunatilaka wins Booker Prize 2022

The novel opens with a photographer, the eponymous Maali Almeida, who has woken up dead in a celestial visa office, while his body sinks in the Beira Lake in Colombo. Maali has seven moons to find the man and woman he loves and lead them to "a hidden cache of photos that will rock Sri Lanka".

‘Sultana’s Dream’ in new Penguin Classics edition and audiobook

The Penguin Classics edition of Sultana’s Dream and Padmarag comes in a paperback, ebook, and as an audiobook narrated by Priya Ayyar, a television and film actor and award-winning audiobook narrator with a BFA and MFA from NYU's Tisch School of the Arts.

On the chaos of teaching English

I discover that teaching is more about reading people.

‘My job is to take someone’s experience and make it visible’

Daily Star Books editor Sarah Anjum Bari speaks with Fahmida Azim about her work with The Insider and about the responsibilities of visual storytelling.

‘Nil Chhaya’ reconjures ghosts of Bengal’s Indigo Revolution

‘Nil Chhaya' connects the Indigo Revolt to the oppressions faced by present day garment factory workers in Bangladesh.

The possibilities of slam poetry

The evening of September 8 at The Daily Star Centre saw an outpouring of verses to a live and very interactive audience. Daily Star Books and SHOUT jointly launched our series of Slam Poetry Nights—an evening, every month, of verses recited in the spirit of creative freedom.

Commonwealth Short Story Prize 2023 open for submissions

Free to enter and open to any citizen, aged 18 and over, of a Commonwealth country, the prize accepts short story entries written in English and translated to English, as well as stories written in Bangla, Chinese, French, Greek, Kiswahili, Malay, Portuguese, Samoan, Tamil and Turkish languages.

Fahmida Azim “enjoys drawing real people living extraordinary lives”

The comics portray the experiences of the Uyghur community under the anti-Muslim police state imposed in China. The story includes testimonies given to the United Nations Human Rights Council and condensed by Anthony Del Col and art direction by Josh Adams.

Syed Waliullah: husband, artist, thinker, writer

The book includes excerpts from Syed Waliullah's diary, snapshots of his editorial for Contemporary magazine, handwritten edits on his pieces for Shaogat magazine, and a comprehensive bibliography of the author's work and achievements.

The books that made ‘Kaiser’

Hoichoi’s Kaiser, released on July 8, 2022, is part tribute to the genre of detective novels and part beckoning call for viewers to return to the excitement of reading books. Everything from the premise—based heavily on Rakib Hasan’s series of detective novels called Teen Goyenda—to the set design, character development and plot twists, rely on books as both objects and intellectual stimuli.

'I just need 30 minutes of silence'

We call Dhaka a noisy city, but hardly ever do I feel like the noise stops at our doorsteps.

You are what you eat in Mashiul Alam's "The Meat Market" (trans. Shabnam Nadiya)

It is a story of discomfort. Of calm, ruthless violence. A drag-your-hands-down-to-uncover-your-eyes gaze at the oblivion we practice not only during Eid holidays, but on any regular day in Bangladesh.

What we readers want from Zoya Akhtar’s ‘The Archies’

From the trailer it looks like Zoya Akhtar's Archies has a wider cast of main characters than Riverdale, but what we want to see is the original comics' innocence revisited.

We read more, they sold less

If you’re part of social media’s book-reading community in Bangladesh, you’ll remember the initial slump in and then an outburst of posts on how much people were reading books.

“Mother’s Milk” by Tahmima Anam: Anatomy of a mother’s pain

In “Mother’s Milk”, a short story by Tahmima Anam which appears in Our Many Longings: Contemporary Short Fiction from Bangladesh (Dhauli Books, 2021), an unnamed narrator gives us brief snatches of her life as she attempts to endure…something. One can’t really call it an incident; it is, seemingly, more a state of being that requires her to keep joy at bay. Consciously, deliberately.

Illustrating Begum Rokeya's ‘Sultana’s Dream’: Interview with Pakistani artist Shehzil Malik

A designer and illustrator whose work focuses on human rights, feminism, and South Asian identity, Pakistani artist Shehzil Malik has just created an artwork based on Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain's novella Sultana's Dream (1905).

Diversity and nuance mark the Bangladeshi experience in Sohana Manzoor's 'Our Many Longings: Contemporary Short Fiction From Bangladesh'

So many words have been used to describe this nation in the last 50 years. Started from a bottomless basket, and along the way we’ve been called resilient, passionate, corrupt, greedy, full of warmth.

In "Taxi Wallah", Numair Atif Chowdhury takes us, once more, through the cartography of a homeland

The version of Bangladesh we received in Babu Bangladesh (2019) was astonishing.

Anuk Arudpragasam's 'A Passage North': Requiem for the textures of time, violent and tender

Sand, water, memory—the grainy, elusive grace they share pervades the experiences making up Sri Lankan author Anuk Arudpragasam’s second novel, A Passage North (Hamish Hamilton, 2021), shortlisted for this year’s Booker Prize.

What They Don’t Tell You About the Statement of Purpose

The SOP, in a way, is a conversation with the admissions committee.

The allure of the campus novel

In Susannah Clarke’s Piranesi, whose review rests atop this article, the narrator labels time not by calendar dates but by the things that happen to him—the birds who visit his wing of the world, the tides that come swinging or gently.

In Suchitra Vijayan’s new book, borders are as arbitrary as history

In Midnight's Borders (Westland Publications, 2021), author and photographer Suchitra Vijayan travels the 9,000 miles of India's borders to understand what Partition did to individual lives and communities, and how it continues to incite violence, displacement, prejudice, and trauma among those who live in the border regions.

There is poetry in solitude: Things I learned from Farhan and Zoya Akhtar’s holiday films

It wasn’t until 2001 that a Bollywood film would unpack for me how friendship truly works—friendship that goes beyond the melodrama of a Sholay or a Kuch Kuch Hota Hain, that navigates the trickier terrains of conflict, miscommunication, and the clashing of irrational egos in everyday life. Farhan Akhtar’s Dil Chahta Hai (2001) turned 20 this year, but it remains a cult classic not only because it revolutionised storytelling in the Indian film industry of its time, earning a place in university syllabi on filmmaking, but also because it introduced a genre and way of thinking that was missing from Bollywood films until then.

'Golden: Bangladesh at 50' - A tender, discerning look at where we are now

Fifty years old this year, the country represented in 'Golden: Bangladesh at 50' (UPL, 2021) is haunted, still, by all that it has survived, and it takes a look at all that it continues to breed, ranging from the festering to the hopeful. And so it follows that the collection feels wonderfully young, even as it comprises some of the most experienced and eminent of our writers, from Neeman Sobhan and Lubna Marium to Arif Anwar, Shazia Omar, Nadeem Zaman, Sabrina Ahmad, and many more.

Is the book really better than the adaptation?

I think it started, at least for us kids of the ’90s, with the Harry Potter franchise.

‘There’s something very old school and romantic about books. They are such a special part of my life.’ - Kishwar Chowdhury

At every step of her journey in the MasterChef kitchen—from her fried sardines with beetroot and blood orange to a date-nestled, ice cream infused paan and panta bhaat with aloo bhorta—Kishwar Chowdhury has talked about writing a cookbook for Bangladeshi recipes as her ultimate dream. In this episode of Star Book Talk, Daily Star Books editor Sarah Anjum Bari talks about food, books, and cookbooks with Kishwar Chowdhury.

Star Book Talk: What's Kishwar Cooking Up?

From watching the judges taste her fried sardines with beetroot and blood orange to witnessing the triumph of a a date-nestled, ice cream infused paan and panta bhaat with aloo bhorta, the journey of Bangladeshi-Australian Chef Kishwar Chowdhury has been one of pride and inspiration to everyone watching.

“I want to give the message that we are a very diverse tribe” - Tahmima Anam

In an episode of Star Book Talk aired live on Friday, July 9, author-anthropologist Tahmima Anam and DS Books Editor Sarah Anjum Bari discussed Anam’s latest novel, The Startup Wife (Penguin India, 2021). They discuss writing tactics, feminism in literature, and Anam’s influences on the path to becoming an award-winning author.

Love and feminism in the world of tech

Earlier this week, in a break from work-related correspondence, I sent author Tahmima Anam a personal email. I told her I was writing to her “as a reader” this time, because after months of scarfing down books for the sole purpose of writing reviews, The Startup Wife (Penguin India, 2021) made me forget that I was reading it for work.

May 15, 2023