The shelf / 7 Asian healing fiction recommendations for rainy days

“Have you met Mr. Skunk? In case you have not, he is a short black and white fellow that you might often see at the bottom of the stairs, or near the dumpster.” Joe paused for breath.

Mashrur Arefin’s 2019 novel, August Abchhaya, is full of moments that evoke the blood-stained memory behind the language of conflict.

This is a must-read book for anyone worried about the vulnerability of democracy in our time and the rise of authoritarian governments everywhere.

Read our tribute to Tintin comics online, on The Daily Star website,

There are few pleasures in the life of a Bangali that come close to the sheer delight of basking in the rare but sweet Sun on a winter morning on the balcony, accompanied by the aroma of a cup of tea,

In a near-perfect echo of today’s world, Nobel Prize-winning Elfriede Jelinek’s On the Royal Road: The Bergher King (Seagull Books, 2020) is stuffed breathless with metaphors, innuendoes, and anecdotes as it satirises US President Donald Trump.

Four-year-old Sharanyo was bored from the lengthy lockdown during the pandemic. He could not go to school, parks, or shops and his day-to-day activities became mundane. He no longer enjoyed eating, showering, or going to bed at the right time. His father Shuvashish had to find found a solution. Having just returned to his son after a yearlong study leave in the UK, Shuvashish started creating stories to keep Sharanyo busy during dinner and bedtime. Soon, Sharanyo started chiming in, visualizing how the characters would look, how the stories would end.

Numair Atif Choudhury’s Babu Bangladesh is a tour de force of a novel. Exuberant, extravagant, learned, zany, ingenious, whimsical, irreverent and provocative, this is a work of amazing merit.

Today, on the first day of 2021, I open the 71st chapter of my memoir written – not sure when – probably before time. I want to read what lies ahead. There are only a few more chapters left before I happily reach the final episode.

In the desolation of today, I hang on to the promises of tomorrow: When life will be in harmony And struggles gone.

Edward Said is one of only a handful of intellectuals who can truly be said to have educated and influenced multiple generations on the Palestinian cause and the different prisms of thought through which we now look at literature, art, and history. In many ways, we are the heirs of the man who popularised the term, “Orientalism”; a man who championed the voices and struggles of the Global South in the Anglo-American sphere.

If you thought the unapologetically outspoken Starr Carter from The Hate U Give (Balzer + Bray, 2017) was a force to be reckoned with, it’s time you met the man who raised her to be so: Maverick Carter.

Prolific writer Rabeya Khatun, a recipient of the Bangla Academy Literary Award 1973, Ekushey Padak 1993, and the Independence Day Award 2017, passed away on January 3, 2021 after suffering from a long period of health complications.

The epigraph of The Old Drift (Hogarth Press, 2020), taken from Vigil’s The Aeneid, briefly narrates the story of a diverse civilisation thriving on the banks of Lethe, the river of forgetfulness that “somnolently” drifts past a “populous throng” of spirits.

Asha Ray is a coder who, upon reconnecting with a high school love interest, abandons her PhD program to write a new algorithm for an exclusive tech firm.

Land—its ownership, its deep history, its uses and abuses—forms the subject of best-selling historian Simon Winchester’s new book,

Many centuries ago, Chinese pilgrims came up the Bay of Bengal on their way to Buddhist sites in the Subcontinent. We have no record of their conversations with the people of Bengal but it was the accurate accounts of early Chinese travellers that enabled archaeologists in the 19th century to rediscover the lost Buddhist sites like that inside a hill at Paharpur.

I forbade the clouds to sprawl around this flood plain- the clouds unendingly somersault around my windowpane at the beckoning of drooping hillocks though.

with its fortress of mahals, brimming with Earth’s treasure, gardens and illusions from the eye of the vulture’s flight, past the roadside dhabas, past the colossal statues and solitary temples, dotting the horizon resting comfortably atop Bygone mosques,

The scents and colours of the morning arouse the wetness of the night. The dewdrop splendour awakens the dawning sunrise drenched in colours