Zertab Quaderi

Grey chips of rough cement  Rust rubble all around,

Storytelling is not easy, especially when a few words portray a character with depth and just enough strokes to etch the social milieu for certain classes and creeds and the outcomes of political ideologies in post-independent Bangladesh.

'A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies'

Review of ‘Forgotten Foods: Memories and Recipes from Muslim South Asia’ (Picador India, 2023) edited by Siobhan Lambert-Hurley, Tarana Husain Khan, and Claire Chambers

The London Bookshop Affair and The Stationery Shop of Tehran are veritable time-travel portals. They offer a deep look at the political mishaps of the times

The 309-page-long dystopian novel is an oppressive account of Eilish who tries to keep her family from falling apart as everything around her crumbles.

When a book mentions one of my favourite authors, W. Somerset Maugham, and the short description suggests betrayal, intrigue, secret affairs, political uprisings, failed marriages, and a whodunnit, there’s little I can do but take it.

The literary world was shaken on August 12, 2022, when the news of Salman Rushdie being stabbed on stage in upstate New York started to pour in. Ironically, he was all set to talk about his involvement in a project to create a refuge in the USA for those writers who are not safe in their country.

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.

Thirty-odd years later, in my two-member home, I try to recreate the Ramzan vibes with overpriced and undersized lamps and lanterns sporting star and crescent motifs

In the thick of it is a young woman of colour who’s a late bloomer and eventually finds her footing.

It’s been a while since I had been meaning to get my hands on a book by Shashi Tharoor, and when my sister asked me what she could get me from Kolkata, I immediately said I’d love to read a book by the renowned Indian author, politician, columnist, and critic.

There were always some guests who would drop by on Friday mornings and in those days, there were no pre-visit calls to check if it would be alright to drop by.

Overnight, the saffron summer afternoons and evenings of dreamy stargazing tumble into a tale of grief, guilt, and pain.