In January 2023, I was sitting in the crowd, listening in on a panel at the 10th and possibly the final edition of the Dhaka Lit Fest. Sheikh Hasina had already been in power for almost 15 years, and it felt like the sun would never set on Awami League, at least not in my lifetime. 

With the departure of an autocrat and the period of semi-expected-still-frightening chaos after, comes the period when we have to sit down to think of what comes ahead, know what we must not do, and get some direction on how we are supposed to go on. In light of this, the following articles and/or chapters have been curated for perspectives that might be needed in this unprecedented situation we’ve found ourselves in.

Review of ‘Nexus’ (Random House, 2024)

Literary cannibalism refers to the retellings of Western classics written by colonised or formerly colonised countries. These authors aim to decolonise the mindset of the readers of the popular literary classics. Decolonisation is a violent process, and by comparing this genre with cannibalism it demonstrates the brutality of it.

I was a Twilight girl.

It's almost as if Matthew Perry was destined to write this book.

Being an ardent admirer of K-pop culture, I wonder why I was hitherto unaware of this gem of a book, One Left by Kim Soom, and the excruciatingly painful truth it delineates.

‘Shabnam’ is a dewdrop in Persian. Shabnam (1960) is the name of Syed Mujtaba Ali’s passionate love story that stretches beyond the history of nearly a century ago.

Everett’s breezy, fast-moving retelling of Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884) is about putting in some due respect.

As of writing this article, the official death count in the Palestinian genocide has surpassed 42 thousand lives. In my room, I quietly sit and read excerpts from Han Kang’s The Vegetarian (Portobello Books, 2015) in celebration of her winning the Nobel Prize in Literature.

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

I am compelled to ask what being a Bangali even means today: What shapes our ethnic identity?

The first pulse, in the midst of a whipping maelstrom, 

South Korean author Han Kang won the 2024 Nobel Prize in Literature for “her intense poetic prose that confronts historical traumas and exposes the fragility of human life”, the award-giving body said yesterday.

At some point, it started turning into hyper-productivity, because more task completion meant more serotonin. My writing, on the other hand, shifted from my internal world to the problems of the external world.

The Dhaka-Cumilla bus tickets are Tk 250 for non-AC, Tk 350 for AC, and Tk 400 for AC VIP. Window seats must be negotiated on the spot. The journey takes three to six hours, past the old capital of Sonargaon, where the moisture in the air inspired the muslin, across the Gomati river and into Cumilla town on the Tropic of Cancer.

Feeling guilty about something? After reading this story, you might think you feel guilty, but you'll never be quite sure if it's guilt or if your heart is just going to explode from sheer terror.

Resistance takes many shapes and forms, from taking up arms, to facing police batons, to picking up a pen

Review of ‘The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida’ (Sort of Books, 2022) by Shehan Karunatilaka

Happy Hour greeted me like a warm hug. This is definitely one of the sweetest books I’ve read this year, and possibly one of the sweetest books I will ever read.