Book Reviews

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...
A GREEN DOVE IN SILENCE: FORTY PROSE POEMS IN TRANSLATION

There is a feel good factor about Gauranga Mohanta's...
REMINISCING HALCYON ELITE DAYS

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

Pahela Baishakh in Carbondale

Celebrating Pahela Baishakh is only getting more and more colorful....
Women at War: Shongramee Naree 52 and 71

Since the Liberation War in 1971 the readers in Bangladesh have...
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.
Colonial History Disrupted: Interpreting the Bottom Line

As Josh Katz says in a recent New York Times article, there has...
The Tide of Nationalism in the Rise of Bangladesh

Nationalism is one of the most powerful political ideologies of the...

Snippets

Her: Seen yesterday's sunset?
My Absence

In the sultry air of March yawns my absence.
LOVE THE ENDURING KIND

"Love means never having to say you're sorry."

Un-Romanticising the Colonial History

Shashi Tharoor's Inglorious Empire: What the British Did to...
BRAVERY HAS NO AGE RESTRICTION

With the rise of fake Freedom Fighter certificates, it is nearly...
A G Stock's Memoirs of Dacca University

“The book is a memoir, not a history, and makes no claim to a...

They Also Were Involved

The subtitle of the book proposes it all: fourteen writers...
Going Beyond Gossip and Name-Dropping?

“Biographies do walk the 'precarious high wire between fiction...
Two Poems by Maruful Islam

The last traces of water evaporate from the beak of the wind

Verses on love and agony: Mashuk Chowdhury's Swarger Replica

Two years earlier I had reviewed one of Mashuk Chowdhury's...
Revisiting Banaphool's Stories

No life can simply be subsumed under a single category- nor is it...
Through Time and Tide

Boats: A Treasure of Bangladesh acts as a paean to the ancient, yet...

Making Revolution Strange/r: Viktor Shklovsky and the Bolsheviks

1978. When Serena Vitale, an Italian writer and translator, managed...
ALL WORK AND SOME PLAY AT RADA

Rada was a lot of hard work interspersed with a good deal of...
Of Jean Paul Sartre and Imposture

In October 1964, Jean Paul Charles Aymard Sartre, a French...

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.
Art and Poetry Makes Singing in Dark Times More Relevant

The poet may be the priest of the invisible if we are to concur with Wallace Stevens. When art and poetry intersect, the invisible suddenly turns into the visible truth and this visible art is the skein that keeps the freedom of expression
ANUK ARUDPRAGASAM WINS THE DSC PRIZE FOR 2017

Anuk Arudpragasam has been announced the winner of the prestigious DSC Prize for South Asian Literature 2017 for his novel, The Story of a Brief Marriage at the Dhaka Lit on the 18th November, 2017.
DLF DIARIES

I wrote this for you, Mamma—for being insufferable on Day 1,
Using Fictional Techniques to Write History

The Last Mughal: the Fall of a Dynasty, Delhi, 1857 by William Dalrymple is the most engrossing book that I've read recently.
9/11 Cataclysm and Sustaining Fear

The other day I was reading Deepa Kumar's Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire while traveling on a bus from Rajshahi to my home
Edward W. Said: An Anniversary Tribute

Edward W. Said (1 November, 1935 - 25 September 2003) – former Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia
Poetry with Emily Dickinson

Recently, the Fifth Amherst Poetry Festival, held in tandem with the Emily Dickinson Museum, had downtown Amherst abuzz with
Was Marx Really Right?

Readers familiar with Terry Eagleton's work would have no doubt from the title of his Why Marx Was Right that it would offer a strong
Some Scattered Thoughts on the Russian Revolution

It seems our era has just stumbled upon its second major crisis—one brought about fascism. The rise of xenophobic racism, religious
October (1927): A Historical and Visual Retromania

Let's imagine some frames from the 80s or 90s - a small group of activists watching a film in their semi-dark Communist party office;
Intriguing Statecraft and Enigmatic Politics

Looked at from a political perspective, Bangladesh will always seem to be a land of democratic upheavals and agitations that has
The Forty Rules of Love

This Turkish author has made her presence felt in the global literary scene with her ten novels over the last two decades. Among her
How Cute Button Eyes Are, Really?

There are "children's" books which will make you travel down memory lane, and then there are "children's" books which will make you
Political Economy of Unpeopling of Indigenous Peoples: the Case of Bangladesh

The word 'people' is a very common and widely used term but the prefix 'un' and the suffix 'ing' makes it perfect as the title of Political
Of Ball Gowns, Corsages, and Tuxes

In more ways than one, an anthology is like an assorted box of candies; you never know what's coming next; 21 Proms is no exception to
The Politics of a Violent Decolonization

Professor Serajul Islam Chowdhury's Jatiotabad, Samprodaikata O JonogonerMukti: 1905-47 or Nationalism, Communalism and
For the War Heroines, I will Speak

It was 1996 when I first got hold of Dr. Nilima Ibrahim's Aami Birangana Bolchhi, or rather, the book got hold of me—my soul, my
Farah Ghuznavi's Fragments of Riversong: Ballads for Our Time

Long ago, I read somewhere that writing short stories is more difficult than writing a novel. While writing about Fragments of