The shelf / 7 Asian healing fiction recommendations for rainy days

Boitoi, the largest e-book platform of Bangladesh, is organizing a 15-day ebook fair from June 16 to June 30. 

“We witnessed great footfall in the afternoon and are glad that people came to the celebrations even amidst this gloomy weather,” shared Zafar Ahmed Rashed, CEO and Chief Editor, about the first day of the event.

Drowned paddy fields look beautiful throughout the day. In the morning, when there is a rough wind, the flooded rice plants dance in the reflection of drenched sunlight.

Fame, at least in the wake of industrial revolution and immediately after, had as much to do with “production” and “distribution” as with “talent.

A pity, it began as a reflective study. A bird’s eye view of Kafka’s conundrum  Is a fallen leaf lost, or free? I slid a window wide open Found a dead moth crumpled on the sill.

With the Russia-Ukraine war continuing and the (consequent) wave of inflation that has struck the world, serious concerns for

Tokhon Golper Tore (Pendulum Publishers, 2022) is Rifat Anjum Pia’s debut collection even though she has been writing for quite a few years now.

If you’re a fantasy nut like me, you’ll be acutely aware of just how “westernised”—almost to the point of being whitewashed—the entire genre is.

The English and Humanities Department at the University of Liberal Arts Bangladesh (ULAB) is organising its second session of ULAB Literary Salon on June 18, 2022, from 5 to 7 pm, at the ULAB Research Building auditorium in their Dhanmondi campus. In discussion this session is the critically acclaimed novel, Cyber Mage, which will also be launched at the event. ‘Cyber Mage’ is a new novel by Saad Z. Hossain, who is amongst some of the most remarkable English fiction writers of modern Bangladesh. He has been published by top imprints in South Asia and the world. His novel, Cyber Mage, is proudly published in Bangladesh by ULAB Press.

Ekti Potaka Pele is a well-known poem by Helal Hafiz. It has been newly translated by Vincent Dip Gomes.

Each of them represented a unique crisis that women in our country are most frequently faced with, and when I had their stories assembled, I knew this was what I was looking for. 

Have you ever tried to call your own cell number? Here's somebody who did and had a strange other worldly experience.

Azhar was a forty-year-old bachelor and an expert locksmith. He also owned a hardware store. He was generally considered to be a good citizen even though fifteen years ago, he went to prison for stealing jewels. But since then, he has been very careful about not getting caught. The stolen money helped him travel around and enjoy the small luxuries of life.

As someone who writes novels, writes about them, and generally works in the medium of prose, I’ve always had an unspeakable envy and admiration for literary forms that take on the moving body of performance.

The protruding question we’re left with is this: is the allocated sum for purchasing even merely enough to support our publishers in this grave time?

An 80-year-old North Indian plunges into despair as her husband passes away.

The Making of Mujib (Bangla Academy Dhaka, 2022) by Dr Rashid Askari is an intellectual biography of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman aimed mainly at historiographers and socio-political scientists.

Critical reading of South Asian history has been majorly subjected to individual narratives. Lack of comparative studies have resulted in ignorance for neighbours and a forgotten history of self.

As someone who is a big fan of The Sandman series, I was ecstatic at the announcement, with only a little bit of dread over whether the adaptation will do right by the comic series.

Over the turn of pages, readers will realise how the Sundarbans have become a muse for the author from being just a mere passion project of documenting the lives of the region’s people.