Arise Out of the Lock: Celebrating 50 Years of Poetry by Woman Poets of Bangladesh
The poems in this ambitious collection are by women poets writing in Bangla, who have emerged from the land that is now Bangladesh—having lived, or are still living here, or are now part of the first-generation diaspora.
The Walls of Our Town
All these years walls of our town stood tall, home to white-winged birds, nostalgic sun, tales too deep for us to tell; last night walls came down crashing,
Smoking’s Injurious to Health
Come, let’s smoke a cigarette together on a dark veranda and count how many flats
Paulo Coelho, where are you?
I love it when Paulo Coelho’s books start with a challenge or a quest, and The Archer (Penguin Random House, 2020), accordingly, does not fail to open with an intriguing pursuit. Upon reading the prologue, I thought I was in for a good read; it was rich and humorous, and in line with the writer’s usual mystical tone.
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 Faizuddin Hussain and Syed Mozaffar Hussain; they eventually moved to Kolkata and finally settled down in Dhaka.
A Woman of Substance
She lies on the bed, a broken canvas. Fragments and splinters of an old frame, Faded colors of painted priceless picture, Greys and white, crooked dark veins, wrinkled paper skin. Frames abound on the wall’s fortress,
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 that captured the crevices of a vacillating mother-daughter relationship accurately, it would be these two.