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?
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
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.
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.

Caution

Love is ok till it becomes like the curiosity of country-lads when they go to airports just to see how aeroplanes fly
5 February 2021, 18:00 PM

Time

Does Time have the time To ever stop by the Clock? Take a little break? Drink a cup of tea? Come Time, come relax with me.
5 February 2021, 18:00 PM

Death is not Funny, Nor is Hamlet a Coward

I got a visitor today. My mother. It was a bright morning, one of those days when you get a feeling that something good will happen. And then mother came. And mother looked perturbed. And I realised it will be like any other day with nothing but madness all around.
5 February 2021, 18:00 PM

45th Int'l Kolkata Book Fair to be dedicated to Bangabandhu

The 45th edition of the International Kolkata Book Fair, to be held in July this year, will be dedicated to Father of the Nation Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and Bangladesh will be the country-in-focus of the event, said organisers yesterday.
5 February 2021, 06:52 AM

South Asian pasts in books

Film director and activist Alamgir Kabir aired the first of his Shwadhin Bangla Betar Kendro dispatches on the Bangladesh Liberation War on June 15, 1971.
3 February 2021, 18:00 PM

Book sales and review competitions mark the beginning of February 2021

In any other year, the beginning of February would normally be marked by the month-long Amar Ekushey Boi Mela which unfolds across the Bangla Academy and Suhrawardy Udyan grounds.
3 February 2021, 18:00 PM

“Boi Mela-centric love for books poses obstacles for the publishing industry.”

Minar Mansur, the current director of the National Book Centre (Jatiya Grantha Kendro), was born on July 20, 1960 in the Barlia village of Chittagong.
3 February 2021, 18:00 PM

History, lost love, and the road not taken in Jodi Picoult’s latest novel

Jodi Picoult’s The Book of Two Ways (Ballantine Books, 2020) discusses with great candour the complexities of human choices, of love, regret, death, and other tumultuous complications that make up life.
3 February 2021, 18:00 PM

Some Writing Instruction Re-considered

Writing is not an art suddenly discovered. It’s a craft gradually developed. Writing–both creative and critical– is formulaic, the way math is.
29 January 2021, 18:00 PM

The Deer

It was that time of year again. I woke up to a furry snout nudging my hand. Lhyelhing the wolf was eagerly trying to get me up; so I pulled off the cover and then immediately went under them as a cold breeze blasted my body.
29 January 2021, 18:00 PM

A History of the Ulama in British India

Over the past few years, and particularly after their recent tussle with the government over the statue of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the Ulama’s involvement in politics has come back under scrutiny in Bangladesh.
27 January 2021, 18:00 PM

Netflix’s ‘The White Tiger’: A Lukewarm Translation of Rage On-screen

One can’t help but be excited about Netflix’s recent attempts at bringing to life and screen valuable works of South Asian fiction. Today’s focus, The White Tiger, which premiered on Netflix on January 21, 2021, was a debut novel by the Indian-Australian writer and journalist Aravind Adiga, who won critical acclaim and the Man Booker Prize in 2008 for his critique of class and caste boundaries in India.
27 January 2021, 18:00 PM

Testimony to the Cruel Birth of Bangladesh

Half a century from where we began, throughout this 50th year of Bangladesh, Daily Star Books will revisit and analyse some of the books that played pivotal roles in documenting the Liberation War and the birth of this nation in 1971. The last issue of every month will feature an elaborate article on these books.
27 January 2021, 18:00 PM

JK Rowling’s Disappointing Cry for Relevance

There are two kinds of children’s stories: those which you dust off as an adult and find yourself discovering new depths to upon revisiting, and those that you flick through and donate.
27 January 2021, 18:00 PM

The Present and the Future of Rashid

Turbulent, murky, and eccentrically wide at this time of the rainy seasons, the river Padma flows incessantly. Lashing with fury at its banks on both sides the river flows swallowing fertile lands, homesteads, settlements. It is a different story at Mawabazar though, where humans endeavour to tame the river.
22 January 2021, 18:00 PM

On Mint Chocolate and the Meaning of Life: Joyce’s Ulysses

“Chotto Kaka, I’m not afraid of the bogey-bug (coronavirus) when I have a tummy full of ice cream.” When my seven-year old nephew made this demand, I thought, he could really have taken a leaf out of Ulysses – a masterpiece by the great Irish maverick, James Joyce.
22 January 2021, 18:00 PM

On Gender Mainstreaming and Governance in South Asia

Despite much of the conversations and advances across countries since the Beijing Platform for Action (1995), gender mainstreaming still lacks a solid theoretical grounding, primarily because it grew outside academia as a movement under the ambit of feminism, and not as a part of social science.
20 January 2021, 18:00 PM

‘A Gift for a Ghost’: Spain’s Great New Graphic Novel

Borja González is a self-taught illustrator, and you both can and cannot tell while looking at his resplendent new work, A Gift for a Ghost (Abram ComicArts, 2020).
20 January 2021, 18:00 PM

The Portrait of the Writer as a Critic

The books which are closest to my heart and which evoke a certain sense of otherworldly glee are the ones that are themselves odes to literature, reading, and writing.
20 January 2021, 18:00 PM

Farida Hossain, Writing with Grace

On October 9, 1965—a day before the World Children’s Day celebrations—the Engineering Institute of Dhaka rang with the melody of young voices, their footfalls and bright costumes. Children from across the two Pakistans had been invited to take part in a competition of musical performances.
19 January 2021, 11:40 AM
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