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

5 mystery thriller books to look out for at and after Boi Mela

Sanjana has killed her husband. She had not meant to kill him, but the odds never seem to be in her favour. Desperately trying to grasp the reality of her situation, she flees the crime scene, leaving her family, friends and life behind.

1y ago

The promises and pitfalls of decolonial thinking

The craze that once prevailed in academia over postcolonialism no longer seems to hover around there anymore.

1y ago

The stories that nonfictions tell

Dense textbooks with words more twisted than the shapes my lips could contort themselves into—for the longest time, my perception of non-fiction didn’t deviate from this singular image.

1y ago

A twisted tale of deception

Reading this book was uncomfortable, like a car crash waiting to happen, it was hard to read and even harder to put down.

1y ago

The enchanting realism in Shahaduz Zaman’s ‘The Mynah Bird’s Testimony’

Shahaduz Zaman is a familiar face in Bangladeshi literature, whose literary career spans decades of fruitful work. He regularly writes columns for Bangla newspapers, has written a few notable biographical fiction, such as Ekjon Komolalebu (Prothoma, 2017), based around the life of Jibanananda Das, and has garnered some duly needed appreciation for ethnographic work on the history of medicine during the liberation war.

1y ago

Tucked between moving trains and elegiac dead-ends

Some among us might have wondered what it feels like to hold a lit bomb between our palms. One that will go off inevitably yet its spark, heat, force, weight, and pulsating nature are so fascinating that we are unable to put it down or look away, all the while knowing at the end of the wick we too will be destroyed—a chosen death, a voluntary annihilation.

1y ago

Rehman Sobhan’s recollections of the road he took towards December 16, 1971

The title of the first of Professor Rehman Sobhan’s two-part memoir suggests that it is about his “years of fulfilment”; the subject matter of its sequel therefore would be about the “untranquil” years that followed.

1y ago

What we represent and who we are

As we close the curtains on the first month of the new year and step into the second, here at Star Books and Literature,  we are thinking back on the year we had.

1y ago

An exploration of Hinduism and its honest interpretation

It’s been a while since I had been meaning to get my hands on a book by Shashi Tharoor, and when my sister asked me what she could get me from Kolkata, I immediately said I’d love to read a book by the renowned Indian author, politician, columnist, and critic.

1y ago

Aimless in Morisaki bookshop

My introduction to the Bangla translation of Japanese books happened during my visit to Baatighar Chittagong. It was there that I encountered the Bangla translations of works by one of my favourite Japanese writers, Haruki Murakami, back in 2021. Then last year, I found myself enchanted with the promise of Morisaki Boighorer Dinguli (Abosar Prokashona, 2023); the allure of the black edition of the book boasting ebony pages and stunning artwork had me yearning for the book months before its scheduled release.

1y ago