Diversity and nuance mark the Bangladeshi experience in Sohana Manzoor's 'Our Many Longings: Contemporary Short Fiction From Bangladesh'
So many words have been used to describe this nation in the last 50 years. Started from a bottomless basket, and along the way we’ve been called resilient, passionate, corrupt, greedy, full of warmth.
Neutrality is an illusion in Katie Kitamura’s ‘Intimacies’
Katie Kitamura’s latest novel, Intimacies (Riverhead Books, 2021), is a stunning follow-up to its critically acclaimed predecessor, A Separation (2017).
Syed Abul Fatah Sharfuddin Sharaf Al Hussaini: A forgotten poet
The first traceable progeny of the lineage, Syed Fida Hussain, had settled in Delhi during the reign of the fourth Mughal Emperor, Jahangir, with his son, Syed Golam Hussain and his grandsons, Syed...
Anindita Ghose's 'The Illuminated': Can widowhood be freeing?
Long after I was done reading The Illuminated (HarperCollins India, 2021), by Anindita Ghose, I kept thinking about Girl in White Cotton (2020) by Avni Doshi. If one had to choose any recent novel...
Shelley Parker-Chan’s 'She Who Became The Sun': A song of identity and fate
Identity is mercurial: it shifts and morphs into a new being at the change of a breeze. That change is glacial, and often happens on its own volition; but one can also grasp a new identity, hold it...
Lines from Fuller Road
This dawn is unvarying, lovely, peaceful, dewy, Morning sky has opened its store of breathing clouds,
Tarana Husain Khan's 'The Begum and the Dastan': Patriarchy is a labyrinth that defies time
I am convinced that while writing her book, The Begum and the Dastan (Westland Publications, 2021), Tarana Husain Khan’s aim was to leave her readers in a literary stupor, dizzy and yearning for...
The Burnt Forest
Shengdey awoke suddenly on a bed with an old man sitting beside him. “Are you okay, my child?” He asked, idly stirring a boiling pot of tea.
