book review
BOOK REVIEW: FICTION / Love, loss, and hope in Tehran
Overnight, the saffron summer afternoons and evenings of dreamy stargazing tumble into a tale of grief, guilt, and pain.
Book Review / JK Rowling’s 'The Running Grave': A souring tale that clumsily rolls downhill
Review of 'The Running Grave' (Sphere, 2023) by Robert Galbraith
Book Review: Fiction / Keep your secrets close and your tech support closer
Addison Square is one of those hidden enclaves where well-heeled Londoners tuck themselves away to create bubbles of “civilised life” from which they can exclude the riffraff surrounding them in the mega-city they call home.
Book Review: Fiction / Despair and death in ‘Truth or Dare’
Bangladeshi literature in English has had a considerably late start compared to its South Asian counterparts in India and Pakistan. A few exceptions aside, a consistency came to be seen only by the early 2010s.
Book Review: Fiction / In search of lost eden
From the beginning we see Benjamin Honey, the patriarch of the island, longing to return to his past, in a garden, the Eden of his childhood where he reminisces about being with a woman who might or might not have been her mother.
Returning to Haifa – A tale of despair and hope amid the Palestinian catastrophe
In "Returning to Haifa," Ghassan Kanafani explores Palestinian trauma and the complex dynamics of homeland, weaving Arab-Jewish perspectives in a tragic narrative.
TRIBUTE / The complete works of Mahmudul Haque: The chorus of a unique sun
Mahmudul Haque was a writer who championed the modern and independent stream of Bangla literature.
BOOK REVIEW: FICTION / A masterful portrait of normalised misogyny and sexism
Award winning Irish writer Claire Keegan is a master of short fiction. Her previous novel, Small Things Like
BOOK REVIEW: FICTION / Love, lies and loneliness
The very first time I came across a description of this book, previously published under the title The Nigerwife (Atria Books, 2023),
Emily Wilson’s ‘The Iliad’ is a triumph in translation
Wilson hasn’t written a retelling from the perspectives of the subjugated but has rather been true to the original, although she doesn’t shy away from acknowledging the sheer misogyny of the Homeric period.
An underwhelming kidnapping
Perhaps the book's biggest fault is that it ends up being (unintentionally or not) a response to Nabokov’s Lolita.
War still rages on
We might never know how it feels when your whole existence is denied or the loss of homeland, but we can get a little glimpse of their suffering.
Eyeball to eyeball at Lords: A Bangladeshi occasion in a very English setting
35000 spectators turned out amid the colourful shamianas and flags to watch the one (and only) unofficial Test in Dhaka in January, 1977.
Western Lane: Grief unfolding on squash court
There is more squash in the book than most readers will take a liking to, but the game sometimes works as a metaphor for the bigger picture.
A modern love story in translation
I became an ardent admirer of Amrita Pritam, the maverick Punjabi author, an outspoken critic of the Indian patriarchy and discriminating social practices, three decades back in New York when I was putting together an anthology of world feminist poems in Bangla translation.
The records of resilience
Much of the reminiscences in The Murti Boys encompass the grittiness of staving off the Pakistanis with little weaponry and a great deal of quick thinking.
A paean to storytelling
Following the trails of Imaginary Homelands (Penguin Books, 1992) and Step Across The Line (Modern Library, 2003), comprising essays written and lectures given by Salman Rushdie between 2003-2020, Languages of Truth is Rushdie’s third collection of nonfiction works and is as a delectable read as its predecessors if not more.
When literature meets food
The author paints an engrossing picture of her experiences and memories, both influenced by food, which is true for most of the people in this world, and particularly for South Asians.
‘The Dark Elf Trilogy’: The synergy between the novels and graphic novels
By visually capturing the characters, landscapes, and action scenes, the graphic novels enhance the reading experience and offer a fresh perspective on the beloved story.
