Bot Book Reviews

Bot Book Reviews

ESSAY / Between tradition and taboo: The arranged marriage trope in Bangla dark romance literature

Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only and does not endorse or condone any form of abuse or exploitation.

2m ago

EVENT REPORT / Celebrating diversity and language at “Bhasha Utshob 2025”

Gulshan Society held a two-day language festival at the Gulshan Lake Park, curated by Sadaf Saaz and Jatrik. The event took place over the weekend of 21-22 February that saw discussion panels, original musical performances, and poetry recitations, surrounded by an array of book stalls and food courts.

2m ago

BOOK REVIEW: FICTION / Rediscovering Reading: How ‘Fragments of Riversong’ helped me heal

Harvard killed my love for reading. When my advisor took me out for a celebratory dinner an hour after my doctoral defense in July 2012, I struggled to read the menu.

3m ago

BOOK REVIEW: FICTION / Murakami and the limits of an artist’s imagination

Haruki Murakami’s The City and Its Uncertain Walls, its English translation published last November, plunges the reader into a kind of metaphysical vertigo that never reaches a concluding synthesis.

3m ago

BOOK REVIEW: FICTION / Shards of clarity

Beginning to read Fine Gråbøl’s What Kingdom, translated from the Danish by Martin Aitkin, is like sitting in a silent room, alone, and a voice begins to speak as though from beside you.

4m ago

BOOK REVIEW: FICTION / Accounts of a joyless life

Izumi Suzuki was little known outside of Japan during her short lifetime. The Japanese author and actress had remained a cult figure most of her life.

4m ago

BOOK REVIEW: FICTION / Through folklore and fantasy: An ode to Bangla mythological characters

The book invites you to revel in the world of legends, to dream as you once did as a child.

4m ago

EVENT REPORT / ‘Catfish and Avatars’: Discussions on cyber lives and cyber safety

The phrases “cyber safety” and “cyber lives” may seem vague and not very well understood among Bangladesh’s netizens.

5m ago

A peripatetic poet’s pleasing musings

The title of this book suggests that it is based in Bengal but it really meanders deftly across time and space, more often than not in “mazy motion”.

1y ago

‘Shubeik Lubeik’, wishes, and the vulnerability of human beings

In Deena Mohamed’s Shubeik Lubeik (originally published in 2015 and translated in 2023 by Mohamed herself), wishes have not only drastically altered the fabric of daily life in Egypt, but the world at large.

1y ago

Meditations on sanity in ‘Hospital’

Though on its surface Sanya Rushdi’s  Hospital, translated into English by Arunava Sinha and recently longlisted for the 2024 Stella Prize, looks to be a breezy, short read—it is anything but. With her rather flattened, sparse prose, Rushdi has managed to write an enduring piece of autofiction, a compelling account of psychosis that neither sensationalises nor withers away any sentimentality from the struggles of mental health.

1y ago

A change of perspective

I love reading about popular inventions which were originally created with a different purpose in mind. For instance, did you know that bubble wrap, that oh-so-ubiquitous packing material that doubles as a stress-relieving toy, was initially intended to be wallpaper? Imagine that! On the one hand, you have hours and hours of bubble-popping fun. On the other hand, probably a trypophobe’s nightmare, so maybe not. Either way, March Chavannes and Alfred Fielding, the co-inventors of the material, thought they had a dud on their hands until IBM started looking for better packing materials for their delicate new computers. The rest is history.

1y ago

A list of life lessons

Set in 1979, this is a story of monsters—the ones who prey on the vulnerable, the ones that exploit our weaknesses, and the ones that we elevate to positions of power.

1y ago

The first American months

The sun was up. The sky was a perfect cerulean blue, the neighbourhood blissfully quiet. Through my window, I relished the sunny first day of 2020, with a cup of tea in my hand.

1y ago

Designing our past and for our future

The author, architect Tanwir Nawaz, besides expressing his thoughts, ideas, and artistic struggles within a body of professional works, has poured his emotions and nostalgic memories into Exploring the World of Architecture and Design.

1y ago

The ‘new oil’ transforming the world

Chip War, a highly praised book written by Chris Miller who teaches International history at Tuft University’s Fletcher School, USA, is a New York Times bestseller.

1y ago

7 fiction books featuring women in STEM

With International Women’s Day coming up tomorrow, 8 March, it becomes increasingly important for us to not only identify and acknowledge, but also actively work towards alleviating the stark gender gap in STEM fields

1y ago

TRIGGER WARNING: Agency, autonomy, and female smoking

A month ago, as I waited for a friend in Banani, I decided to grab a packet of cigarettes. I’m not good at calculations for loose change and the vendor, old and seemingly disoriented, was having a hard time too.

1y ago