Book Reviews

The Waterless Sea: A Curious History of Mirages

Mesmerised within “zones of blindness and insight,” the British...
Arundhati Roy and Our Reality

Some days ago, a friend of mine who stays abroad, sent me a gift....
Poetry

“How do I make you understand,

A Reader's Guide to Writers' Britain

Awakening your wanderlust, in hand is the ultimate travel guidebook...
The Bones of Grace: Rewriting History

Tahmima Anam attracted an international readership when her debut...
The Good Muslim: A Post-Liberation War Bangladesh

“A novel asserts nothing; it provides a framework for thinking...

The Good Muslim: A Post-Liberation War Bangladesh

“A novel asserts nothing; it provides a framework for thinking...
UNTITLED

No, you have no home.
Islam: A Short History

History by definition denotes all the events that happened in the...

The Ballad of Ayesha: Ayesha and Her Country

Just like Behula, the people of Bangladesh never stopped persevering …
BRUSH STROKES OF HISTORY AND A PERSONAL BRUSH

This is an aberrant situation…well, read on. Alam, in his Itihasher...
Djinn City: Myth and Mystery in Dhaka's Underbelly

No need for a movie tonight! Grab yourself a cup of steaming hot...

Letters to Namdeo Dhasal: Meditations of a Dalit Mystic

Over the last decade, India has been experiencing a major geo...
Transatlantic Transitions: Back to Global Future?

The term 'transatlantic relations' has emerged as a...
A Tale of Rohingya: A Take on Dislocation and Displacement

The life of refugee people has always been difficult, and in the...

Through the Eyes of Mrs. Funnybones

Balancing beautifully between her panache and wit, Twinkle Khanna a...
The Best Asian Short Stories: Stories from a Changing Continent

A son worries whether his mother, who is travelling alone, will be...
Art Against Genocide: A Testament of Time

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

THE ETERNAL BARD

Just the other day I was watching over CNN the celebrated...
A Review of The Sunset Club

'Boorha Binch' is the term used by walkers and wanderers...
In an Old Metropolis Once We Lived

When I put my first step

Nirbachito Galpa: A Reflection of Middle-Class Lifestyle

Abul Hayat is a renowned Bangladeshi actor. Starting with Oedipus...
The Uprising of 1857

There is perhaps no event in the long history of the British empire...
Pestilential Scourge - The Plague

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

Professor Nurul Islam’s Odyssey

This book is the story of Professor Nurul Islam, arguably Bangladesh's most famous living economist. The narrative begins with his
Once Upon a Night

Surabala and I went to school together, played husband and wife, being the kids that we were. Whenever I went to their house, her
ECLECTIC ESSAYS

Muhammad Zamir is a prolific writer, notably for the national newspapers of Bangladesh, and writes proficiently in both Bengali and
Social “Cannibalism” and the Edible Women

The Edible Woman (1969) is the Canadian author Margaret Atwood's debut novel. It follows the story of Marian MacAlpin, a young
Going to Hatiya Island

At first sight of our island, I confess
Crescent: A Review

Diana Abu-Jaber, a Jordanian-American writer based in U.S., attracted an international readership when her debut novel Arabian Jazz
Fundamentalism in Bangladesh: A Review

Prof. Abul Barkat, who is known as “people's economist,” has published a book on fundamentalism in Bangladesh from Muktobuddhi
Where Reality Meets Fiction

“All our lives, we are never in a single moment at any time”- said Arundhati Roy in her interview with Patrick Carey for Books and Arts.
Anne -The Hopeless Dreamer

If you are a fan of Little Women or What Katy Did series, Anne of Green Gables and its sequels are just the thing you have been looking
Jibanananda Das: Baitarani

I'm not sure when I rose from the grave of death—
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 at the end of what he describes as a 'kangaroo trial,' on 18
Pahela Baishakh in Carbondale

Celebrating Pahela Baishakh is only getting more and more colorful. It is no less than a carnival these days. As far I can remember,
A GREEN DOVE IN SILENCE: FORTY PROSE POEMS IN TRANSLATION

There is a feel good factor about Gauranga Mohanta's collection of prose poems A Green Dove in Silence. A neat jacket, crispy pages,
Women at War: Shongramee Naree 52 and 71

Since the Liberation War in 1971 the readers in Bangladesh have seen many narratives on 1971 and 1952. In most of these, the central
REMINISCING HALCYON ELITE DAYS

Days with Dinko and other Memories, written by Monica Chanda, and edited and published by her daughter Malavika Karlekar, is a
BLRC Observes World Poetry Day

“Poetry should be free from Royalist Canada's university elites' hierarchy to come down to mass people” - was the resounding declaration
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