Event Report / “We do not live outside history”: Dr. Azfar Hussain on humanism, fascism, and the July Uprising
26 July 2026, 16:24 PM
News
“It is one of those questions that politely pretends to be a title, but secretly aspires to be a life’s work,” began Dr. Azfar Hussain on an overcast evening on the July 23, 2026, addressing a packed forum hall at the University of Liberal Arts, Bangladesh (ULAB), alluding to the title of his public lecture: What Does It Mean to Be Human in the Age of 'Posthumanism' and Global Fascism?
Essay / The writing’s boring, so he’s a third-class writer
25 July 2026, 00:00 AM
Essay
Poetry / You ask me
25 July 2026, 00:00 AM
Poetry
Book Review: Fiction / The queen who would not stay dead
23 July 2026, 00:00 AM
Books & Literature
Book Review: Nonfiction / A historian’s vision vis-a-vis Hindutva mythmaking
23 July 2026, 00:00 AM
Books & Literature
Fiction / Lira’s glasses
19 July 2026, 19:00 PM
Fiction
Event Report / Special Discussion Marks Abul Hasnat’s Birth Anniversary: ‘Nabiner Shahittya: Shwapna O Shwapnabhongo’
19 July 2026, 17:49 PM
News
Tribute / The teacher beyond the classroom
18 July 2026, 00:00 AM
Tribute
Flash Fiction / The knife seller
18 July 2026, 00:00 AM
Books & Literature
Interview / In conversation with Sonia Bahl: Author of ‘Eighteen Inches Apart’
What becomes increasingly evident across Bahl’s three novels is her sustained fascination with the emotional significance of almosts and maybes.
News Report / Kazuo Ishiguro set to return with new novel in 2027
20 June 2026, 15:18 PM
News Report / NSU DEML offers certificate course in creative writing for the second time
16 June 2026, 22:03 PM
Event Report / “Our Story”: Where parents and children made memories by hand
15 July 2026, 21:38 PM
News Report / Jamir Nazir wins 2026 Commonwealth Short Story Prize following AI review
3 July 2026, 20:09 PM
Event Report / Letters across a lifetime: The 20th staging of Love Letters
21 June 2026, 17:40 PM
Event Report / Dhaka Zine Mela 2026: A celebration of creativity and community
11 June 2026, 17:39 PM
Interview / Kishwar Chowdhury on Bangali culture and culinary storytelling
11 June 2026, 00:00 AM
Interview / Diaspora, national identity and reality TV with Pajtim Statovci
9 June 2026, 21:48 PM
Not every story ends with rejoicing. Not all questions are answered within one lifetime. Not everyone will get to fulfil their dreams. All my protagonists are incomplete until the end. And the end itself offers no catharsis. It’s the same darkness that was present when the reader met them the first time. I write about the world and the people within it the way I have experienced the world.
News Report / Marjane Satrapi, voice of exile and resistance, dies at 56
4 June 2026, 17:58 PM
Event Report / Poetry collection Adivasi Premikar Mukh: The Portrait of an Adivasi Beloved launched at Bangla Academy
19 May 2026, 14:26 PM
The bilingual poetry collection Adivasi Premikar Mukh: The Portrait of an Adivasi Beloved, (Oitijjhya, 2026) by journalist, poet, and fiction writer Ehasan Mahamud was launched on Monday, May 18, at the Kabi Shamsur Rahman Seminar Room of Bangla Academy, Dhaka. The event was organised by Oitijjhya Publications and moderated by Mostafa Mushfiq.
Event Report / Two-day literary memorial and discussion event held at Bengal Shilpalay
17 May 2026, 17:16 PM
The shelf / 7 Asian healing fiction recommendations for rainy days
18 June 2026, 17:04 PM
The Shelf
You know when the sky trades its brightness for a low, silver hue, and you wrap your fingers tightly around your tea, seeking that small, steady pulse of warmth. This is the essence of healing fiction. Often rooted in the Japanese concept of iyashikei, these stories focus on the quiet spirit through small, everyday moments. You may have already heard of Days at the Morisaki Bookshop or We’ll Prescribe You a Cat. While those popular favourites have opened a door for many, there are a few other tales worth the read.
Reflections / In the age of AI allegations
13 June 2026, 00:00 AM
Creative Nonfiction / Our Eids and Puja in Azimpur
30 May 2026, 00:00 AM
Essay / Ghosts in the secretariat: Mapping the Bangladeshi Gothic
7 May 2026, 00:00 AM
Book Review: Fiction / Agency, identity, and the rewriting of Medusa
1 May 2026, 00:00 AM
Fiction / Body Selim
18 April 2026, 00:00 AM
News Report / Two Bangladeshi writers make 2026 Commonwealth Short Story Prize shortlist
14 April 2026, 16:54 PM
Bookcentric announces September 2021 reading challenge
Dhaka’s Bookcentric library has announced their September 2021 reading challenge in collaboration with Daily Star Books. For this month, Bookcentric will look at books that feature a “utopia” or, conversely, a “dystopia”, given their thematic similarities, from Cormac McCarthy’s The Road (2006) and Ursula K Le Guin’s The Dispossessed (1974) to Begum Rokeya’s Sultana’s Dream (1905), among others.
8 September 2021, 18:00 PM
Susanna Clarke's 'Piranesi': How real is the world we imagine?
In the 1700s, there lived an Italian artist, architect, and archaeologist who saw in the world far more than what was in it. Giovanni Battista Piranesi captured his world, among other things, through prints: the most famous of which are the Views, an imitation of the classical remains of Rome, and the imaginary renditions of the Prisons.
8 September 2021, 18:00 PM
Jalal-Ud-Din Ahmad: A headmaster’s memoir
Pursuit of Excellence in Teaching: A Memoir (University Press Limited, 2021) chronicles the life and legacy of Jalal-Ud-Din Ahmad, a gifted educator who grew up to be the first graduate in his village in Feni, East Pakistan, and whose humble beginnings culminated in his winning the Presidential Award for “Best Headmaster in Pakistan” in 1967.
8 September 2021, 18:00 PM
JCB Prize for Literature announces 2021 longlist
The annual competition, which has been hailed as “India's most valuable literature prize”, offers INR 2,500,000 (USD 35,000) to its winner for distinguished work of fiction by an Indian writer working in or translated to English.
8 September 2021, 07:28 AM
Hardback edition released of ‘Inherited Memories’, Goethe-Institut and Zubaan Books’ project on the 1947 partition
Zubaan Books has released a hardback edition of Inherited Memories: Third Generation Perspectives on Partition in the East, concerning the still-felt ramifications of the 1947 partition.
5 September 2021, 11:37 AM
FEMALE WARRIORS
I had decided to write a brief review of Selima Chowdhury’s book when it was first published, but what with one thing or another making me put it off, a couple of years rolled by, and we found ourselves caught up in a pandemic with no end in sight.
3 September 2021, 18:00 PM
Story of Bengal and Bengalis: The Bengali Homeland and its Inhabitants
With the onset of the new millennium in the 21st century, there seems to be a revival of interest in the space, in the eastern part of South Asia, historically known as Bengal, and the people who inhabit this space, the Bengalis.
3 September 2021, 18:00 PM
ABUL MANSUR AHMAD: Our Language and our Literature
On the occasion of the birth anniversary of author, journalist, and politician Abul Mansur Ahmad (1898-1979) on September 3, 2021, we publish an excerpt from his essay, "Our Language and Our Literature", first published in The Concept magazine in 1965 and later collected in the book, 'End of a Betrayal and Restoration of Lahore Resolution' (1975).
1 September 2021, 18:00 PM
Radio, ghazals, and “Islami gaan”: What Nazrul’s shift to music said about his syncretism
The adoption of the ghazal by Nazrul, with renewed fervour in the late ’20s and ’30s, signaled an understanding that his earlier literary and linguistic world was an impermanent one, as was a politics in which the unity of Hindus and Muslims was achieved through an appeal to a shared culture and language.
1 September 2021, 18:00 PM
Radhika Singha's 'The Coolie's Great War': The forgotten ones of World War I
As of December 31, 1919, a total of 1.4 million Indians were recruited to various theatres of the First World War. Among them, approximately 563,369 were “followers or non-combatants”.
1 September 2021, 18:00 PM
Elif Shafak’s ‘The Island of Missing Trees’: Fragments of an uprooted people
The people we meet in Elif Shafak’s The Island of Missing Trees (Viking, 2021) are haunted by terrible tragedies from several years past, by a beautiful island divided into two.
1 September 2021, 18:00 PM
BOOKCENTRIC READING CHALLENGE: Readers review nautical books
From August 2021, Daily Star Books was excited to have joined Bookcentric’s monthly reading challenge, which invites readers to read and review books following each month’s designated theme. Under August’s theme of books with nautical themes, here is what our readers read—and reviewed—last month!
1 September 2021, 12:53 PM
In ‘Toward Happy Civilization’, a portrait of desperation
Typical of any Samanta Schweblin story from her International Booker-longlisted collection, Mouthful of Birds (OneWorld, 2019), a sense of anxiety is strongly perceptible here, especially through the characters Fi and Pe. One grows afraid of them as they start showing both lovingly caring and Big Brother-like tendencies. What heightens the ominous halo surrounding these two is the hostages’ inability to translate their emotions; why would someone who provides for you not give you a way out?
31 August 2021, 15:03 PM
At long last, a ‘Foundation’
Originally published as a series of short stories in the 1940s, the Foundation series—expanded later with a string of prequels and sequels—became Asimov’s greatest contribution to the genre and remains, to this day, one of the greatest reads for any SF connoisseur.
30 August 2021, 07:28 AM
Writer and diplomat Ataur Rahman no more
Ataur Rahman, well known humour writer, diplomat, and former director general of the postal department, passed away from a Coronavirus infection yesterday. He was 79 years old.
29 August 2021, 07:40 AM
Writer Sheikh Abdul Hakim passes away
Renowned author and translator Sheikh Abdul Hakim passed away at his Madartek residence in Dhaka yesterday afternoon.
28 August 2021, 18:00 PM
How I found my voice as a debut author
Being accused of copying Humayun made me want to create something of my own, something that wouldn’t be considered mainstream, but nor would it be too out of the box. I wanted to reflect on realism.
28 August 2021, 11:50 AM
Submissions for 2022 Commonwealth Short Story Prize to open September 1
The prestigious Commonwealth Short Story Prize competition returns for its 11th iteration, opening its doors for short story submissions from September 1 to November 1, 2021 (11:59pm in any time zone).
28 August 2021, 05:55 AM
On Jared Diamond’s Guns, Germs and Steel
Guns Germs and Steel was first published in 1997 and received the Pulitzer Prize for nonfiction the following year. Reading this book has been an incredible experience. Each time I put the book down for the day I had to gasp for air because I had been totally immersed, rather like deep sea diving and looking at the world in a new dimension.
27 August 2021, 18:00 PM
Brothers with the lyrical names
I arrived in Islamabad as a schoolboy along with my family from Dhaka in January,1968. The new capital city of Pakistan was still in its nascent stage of development.
27 August 2021, 18:00 PM
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