book review
BOOK REVIEW: POETRY AND NONFICTION / Poetry for our times and a poet’s new frontier
Inevitably, Kaiser Haq’s The New Frontier and Other Odds and Ends in Verse and Prose is about the poet, his poetic predilections, and situatedness at this time of human existence. In many ways it is typical of the verse we have come to expect from our leading poet in English for a long time now, but in other ways it articulates his present-day concerns in new and striking poetic measures.
BOOK REVIEW: FICTION / The saga of a mother’s sacrifice and resilience
Anisul Hoque’s Kokhono Amar Maa-ke is the story of appalling sacrifices made by a mother and her unwavering determination to secure a bright future for her children.
BOOK REVIEW: FICTION / Should this lost novel have been found?
Articles on Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s last novel to be published by his sons against the author’s wishes built up my anticipation and I couldn’t wait for April to arrive. Thanks to Bookworm, I got my copy the moment they had it in store and I read it twice. It didn’t impress me the first time as it was just a string of chapters describing how a promiscuous woman drove herself into the arms of different men on her annual August 16 visits to a Caribbean island.
BOOK REVIEW: FICTION / It’s ‘Mean Girls’ meets ‘Heathers’ meets ‘The Craft’
The best part of this book is perhaps the fact that all the weird, bonkers cultish stuff just happens with no rhyme or reason to it.
BOOK REVIEW: NONFICTION / (Re)visit to the alleys of contestation, narratives, and memories that the Partition left behind
The book discusses the lack of sensitivity among policymakers in acknowledging the distinct socio-cultural differences and linguistic and community identities of the refugees that often got merged. It explores how different categories of refugees received different treatments.
BOOK REVIEW: GRAPHIC NOVEL / A love letter to traveling with friends
A review of ‘Roaming’ (Drawn and Quarterly, 2023) by Mariko Tamaki and Jillian Tamaki
BOOK REVIEW: FICTION / The strange library of Haruki Murakami
Review of the Bangla translation of ‘A Strange Library’ (Knopf, 2014) by Haruki Murakami
BOOK REVIEW: FICTION / The unanticipated consequences of caretaking
From the sensory delights of birdsong in the morning and sunset views from a lookout point to the less appealing realities of monitoring stagnant pond water and counting newts, we accompany Katie on her journey of discovery.
BOOK REVIEW: NONFICTION / A peripatetic poet’s pleasing musings
The title of this book suggests that it is based in Bengal but it really meanders deftly across time and space, more often than not in “mazy motion”.
The Continuing Relevance of Munnu
A review of 'Munnu: A Boy from Kashmir' (Fourth Estate, 2015), a stark portrayal of Kashmir, not through the eyes of a foreign individual looking in from the outside, but a Kashmiri living through the Indian occupation
The ethics of ghostwriting in fiction
Ghostwriting is not new, and Millie Bobby Brown is not the first celebrity to hire a ghostwriter. But, soon after she published her book, she came under fire for using one.
Learning to let go
As the novel progresses, you peel back layers of history between Claire and her grandparents and realise that the Korea issue isn’t as straightforward as our protagonist imagined.
Navigating the labyrinth of Bangladesh’s secular identity
The debate about the constitutional position of secularism in Bangladesh with Islam as the state religion raises one burning question, “Is the country undergoing an identity crisis?”
Discovering something not-so new with ‘The Turtle of Oman’
The melancholic, tuned nostalgia of finishing a journey was being caressed by the soft yet upbeat rhythm of the journey coming forth.
Human virtue questioned in the not-so-small things
At a time when everyone is grappling with financial instability while combating the icy spree, Bill is grateful enough to have survived another year with his wife Eileen and five daughters.
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.
JK Rowling’s 'The Running Grave': A souring tale that clumsily rolls downhill
Review of 'The Running Grave' (Sphere, 2023) by Robert Galbraith
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.
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.
