Book Reviews

THE ETERNAL BARD

Just the other day I was watching over CNN the celebrated...
The Best Asian Short Stories: Stories from a Changing Continent

A son worries whether his mother, who is travelling alone, will be...
The Uprising of 1857

There is perhaps no event in the long history of the British empire...

Nirbachito Galpa: A Reflection of Middle-Class Lifestyle

Abul Hayat is a renowned Bangladeshi actor. Starting with Oedipus...
A Review of The Sunset Club

'Boorha Binch' is the term used by walkers and wanderers...
Art Against Genocide: A Testament of Time

As much as the ongoing Rohingya crisis is being extensively covered...

In an Old Metropolis Once We Lived

When I put my first step
Once Upon a Night

Surabala and I went to school together, played husband and wife,...
Going to Hatiya Island

At first sight of our island, I confess

Pestilential Scourge - The Plague

Published in 1947, the background of Albert Camus' The Plague...
ECLECTIC ESSAYS

Muhammad Zamir is a prolific writer, notably for the national...
Crescent: A Review

Diana Abu-Jaber, a Jordanian-American writer based in U.S.,...

Professor Nurul Islam’s Odyssey

This book is the story of Professor Nurul Islam, arguably...
Social “Cannibalism” and the Edible Women

The Edible Woman (1969) is the Canadian author Margaret Atwood'...
Fundamentalism in Bangladesh: A Review

Prof. Abul Barkat, who is known as “people's economist,” has...

Where Reality Meets Fiction

“All our lives, we are never in a single moment at any time”- said...
A Review of His Chariot of Life: Liberation War, Politics and Sojourn in Jail

After Tawfiq-e-Elahi Chowdhury was slapped an uncertain prison term...
Women at War: Shongramee Naree 52 and 71

Since the Liberation War in 1971 the readers in Bangladesh have...

Anne -The Hopeless Dreamer

If you are a fan of Little Women or What Katy Did series, Anne of...
Pahela Baishakh in Carbondale

Celebrating Pahela Baishakh is only getting more and more colorful....
REMINISCING HALCYON ELITE DAYS

Days with Dinko and other Memories, written by Monica Chanda, and...

Jibanananda Das: Baitarani

I'm not sure when I rose from the grave of death—
A GREEN DOVE IN SILENCE: FORTY PROSE POEMS IN TRANSLATION

There is a feel good factor about Gauranga Mohanta's...
BLRC Observes World Poetry Day

“Poetry should be free from Royalist Canada's university...

I Can Choose to Go, But Why Should I?

Perhaps, it is better to turn around.
Snippets

Her: Seen yesterday's sunset?
Un-Romanticising the Colonial History

Shashi Tharoor's Inglorious Empire: What the British Did to India (2017, Hurst: London, 296 pages) does not tell any untold story. The
Colonial History Disrupted: Interpreting the Bottom Line

As Josh Katz says in a recent New York Times article, there has been a 540% increase in Fentanyl-related deaths over the past three
My Absence

In the sultry air of March yawns my absence.
BRAVERY HAS NO AGE RESTRICTION

With the rise of fake Freedom Fighter certificates, it is nearly impossible not to be a cynic when one hears about early teen or eleven
The Tide of Nationalism in the Rise of Bangladesh

Nationalism is one of the most powerful political ideologies of the world and its wave still vibrates through the Indian subcontinent
LOVE THE ENDURING KIND

"Love means never having to say you're sorry."
A G Stock's Memoirs of Dacca University

“The book is a memoir, not a history, and makes no claim to a historian's detachment or research.” With this statement, A G Stock
They Also Were Involved

The subtitle of the book proposes it all: fourteen writers reminisce about their own, or their dear ones' experiences immediately prior to, or during, or at the end of the Liberation War of Bangladesh.
Verses on love and agony: Mashuk Chowdhury's Swarger Replica

Two years earlier I had reviewed one of Mashuk Chowdhury's poetry collections Nodir Nam Dusshomoy for The Daily Star Book Review
Making Revolution Strange/r: Viktor Shklovsky and the Bolsheviks

1978. When Serena Vitale, an Italian writer and translator, managed her third meeting with Viktor Shklovsky (1893-1984), the
Going Beyond Gossip and Name-Dropping?

“Biographies do walk the 'precarious high wire between fiction and non-fiction” (Claire Battershill in “No One Wants Biography”).
Revisiting Banaphool's Stories

No life can simply be subsumed under a single category- nor is it possible to come up with a single term to define life's fluxes or
ALL WORK AND SOME PLAY AT RADA

Rada was a lot of hard work interspersed with a good deal of pressure releasers. Talk about the right doses of work and play—RADA
Two Poems by Maruful Islam

The last traces of water evaporate from the beak of the wind
Through Time and Tide

Boats: A Treasure of Bangladesh acts as a paean to the ancient, yet now sadly dying craft of naval carpentry in Bangladesh. Its roots in the region go back far enough for Ibn Battuta...
Of Jean Paul Sartre and Imposture

In October 1964, Jean Paul Charles Aymard Sartre, a French philosopher and novelist, was declared winner of the Nobel Prize for literature for that year.
Myanmar's Enemy Within: Buddhist Violence and the Making of a Muslim “Other”

As Bangladesh continues to grapple with the massive influx of Rohingya refugees, an unprecedented spotlight has been shone on the
Rediscovering Origin

These two questions happen to be at the heart of human knowledge and rationality, and the focal point of Dan Brown's ground-
SKETCHES ON A WIDE CAMPUS

This book's subtitle, Sketches from my Life gestures helpfully at the book's content for it is about the full and colorful life lived by its
Efflorescence of South Asian Sci Fi?

I have long been a reader of science fiction. Not just for entertainment, but also for insights useful for my research and teaching.
Church Bells and Darjeeling Tea

The title of the book entices the reader. We all love Darjeeling tea, but why 'Church bells?' Zeena Chowdhury's experience of
Is It Truth or Dare?

Those familiar with Nadia Kabir Barb's column Straight Talk in The Daily Star will be pleased with her short fiction debut Truth or Dare.
An Impression of Some Turbulent Days

First published in 1973, Amy Geraldine Stock's Memoirs of Dacca University: 1947-1951, is not just another memoir. The current
Partition, 1947—Whodunnit?

On August 26, 2017, DS brought out a special supplement on the1947 partition of Bengal. It contained fine articles on the subject by
Stories from the Edge

A perfect read for the month of our victory, Stories from the Edge is an anthology of personal and deeply emotional narratives of our
DANCING IN THE DARK: MY STRUGGLE BOOK 4

This is the fourth installment of the six-volume autobiography of Norwegian novelist Karl Ove Knausgaard and has been translated
The Art World is Essentially Male

In 1666 Margaret Cavendish wrote a science fiction work titled The Description of a New World, Called the Blazing-World, although it
The Vanishing American Adult

Benjamin Eric Sasse aka Ben Sasse is a freshman Republican Senator from Nebraska. A doctorate in American History from Yale, Sasse was named President of Midwestern University, Freemont Nebraska in 2010.