Book Review
Review of Arundhati Roy’s Things that can and cannot be said
After I finished Things that can and cannot be said, I stood in awe of how much power I held in my hands. In this slim volume were the musings, passing insights, and finally, the long-awaited encounter—albeit censored—of some of the strongest voices against modern-day empire.
book review / Mohammed Hanif and the voices in his head
The Guardian's review of Mohammed Hanif's Red Birds points out how Momo, one of its characters, “complicates our picture of helpless children in refugee camps.”
Book Review / Anna Burns' Milkman Takes Place Wherever You Are
We read about this girl. That she may have a name doesn't matter. What matters is that she is a'middle-sister', 'middle' as in relative, as in younger sister to someone, older sister to someone, sister-in-law to someone, and daughter to someone else.
BOOK REVIEW / Contextualising Islam, the social and the political
The issue of Islam in Bangladesh is complex, sensitive and fraught. It has problematised the sense of national identity of Bangladeshis into a schizophrenic duality driven by the tension between the cultural and religious aspects of their collective personality.
Book Review / Fear and loathing in the White House
"Fear" is an important book not only because it raises serious questions about the American president's basic fitness for office, but also because of who the author is.
Through the doors
There cannot be a book more for our times than Mohsin Hamid's Exit West which came out last year, at the peak of the European migration “crisis”. Hamid's earlier The Reluctant Fundamentalist too tackled contemporary issues of identity, Islamophobia, and disenchantment with US foreign policy, against the backdrop of 9/11.
Writings of Alamgir Kabir / Resurrection of an emancipator
Ours is a society of cultural amnesia, so it is not surprising that Alamgir Kabir is not a part of our usual reminiscences.
Jiboner Bone Bone - A memoir that depicts Bangladesh
Jiboner Bone Bone (In the Forests of Life) is a heartfelt autobiography written by Nuruddin Ahmad (1920-2010), one of the first Bengali-Muslim officials of the Indian Forest Service (IFS). The tales of his eventful life take in the growth and coming to being of Bangladesh, his observations on Bengali middle-class society and how he worked his way to the top of the Forest Department in the midst of hostile British and Pakistani governments.
War, in all its suffering
"Most children have two whole legs and two whole arms but this little six-year-old that Dinesh was carrying had already lost one leg, the right one from the lower thigh down, and was now about to lose his right arm.” Anuk Arudpragasam's powerful debut novel “The Story of a Brief Marriage” starts with this haunting description of a shrapnel-struck child being brought to a makeshift clinic and about to undergo
