Books & Literature

2024: The year of literature in translation

Starting from comfort reads to kicking-my-feet-giggling romance to stimulating memoirs, there is a little bit for everyone from every country, including the vast South Asia. Here we have accumulated a few titles to give you an overview of all the translated works published this year. 
25 December 2024, 18:00 PM

Fascism, propaganda, and resistance: ‘Wicked’ as a mirror to our times

The basic premise is a powerful one: What if the Wicked Witch of the West wasn't so bad after all, and what if the Wizard and the seemingly perfect society he oversaw were the real threats?
20 December 2024, 14:10 PM

‘Catfish and Avatars’: Discussions on cyber lives and cyber safety

The phrases “cyber safety” and “cyber lives” may seem vague and not very well understood among Bangladesh’s netizens.
18 December 2024, 18:00 PM

Redefining aviation safety culture

Research on Aviation Safety: Safety is a Mindset by Air Commodore Munim Khan Majlish is a fresh look at the concept of aviation safety challenging standard ideas about safety.
18 December 2024, 18:00 PM

UPL marks its 49th anniversary with book fair celebration

The University Press Limited (UPL) celebrated its anniversary with readers, writers and well-wishers. The exchange of greetings was held from 4 PM to 8 PM at the UPL central office, located at Green Road in Farmgate area of Dhaka, on December 13 (Friday).
18 December 2024, 18:00 PM

A tale of survival, dominance, and self-discovery in colonial Bengal

Obayed Haq’s Bangla novel, Arkathi, is almost a bildungsroman tale filled with adventure and self-reflection. In true bildungsroman fashion, where the protagonist progresses into adulthood with room for growth and change, a bulk of Haq’s novel talks about the spiritual journey that an orphan, Naren, takes through a forest in order to mature, and comes out on the other side to realise a community’s deep, hidden truth.
12 December 2024, 18:00 PM

Confronting cultural silence on IPV in Bangladeshi communities

Proverbs, short and profound, often sum up wisdom passed down through generations. Bangla, one of the world’s most spoken languages, is rich with such gems. One such saying in the language—”manush ki bolbe?”—is central to Intimacies of Violence, a debut book by Dr Nadine Shaanta Murshid, an associate professor at the University at Buffalo.
12 December 2024, 18:00 PM

On invisibilised violence

In classic Bengali fiction, the kitchen is a central site for conflict and community bonding.
6 December 2024, 18:00 PM

How to make incendiary literature

Zines are a new name for an old thing. They are the revolutionary pamphlets of the 1930s, and the underground student manifestos of the ‘50-’60s. They are a distant relative of the tattered choti mags. There are many other examples from around the world of self-published, self-distributed, and often dangerous reading material.
4 December 2024, 18:00 PM

I love you; it’s ruining my life

Someone in a chat group somewhere called Sally Rooney the ‘Taylor Swift’ of the literary world, and now I cannot unsee it.
4 December 2024, 18:00 PM

Storytelling, struggles, and reimagining identity

Patriarchy would have you believe that women are inherently complicated—creatures who must be defined, boxed in, or reduced to stereotypes.
27 November 2024, 18:00 PM

Of homes and the worlds: Women, violence, and the domestic space

November 25, the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women, marks the beginning of 16 Days of Activism against Gender-Based Violence which goes until December 10, Human Rights Day.
27 November 2024, 18:00 PM

7 Sisters in the library: Interpersonal conversations and catharsis found

The event switched gears soon enough, and the final hour saw Shala Gallery turned into a rave.
21 November 2024, 13:44 PM

Regional cooperation and the challenges Bangladesh faces

Bangladesh is currently going through turbulent times as it tries to find its way out from dictatorial political rule towards an uncertain future. During the past decade,  Bangladesh did achieve significant economic progress, but it came with increased economic inequality, unparalleled corruption, and loss of personal freedom.
20 November 2024, 18:00 PM

An intellectual debt worth remembering

The history of Bangladesh’s conception is incomplete without recognising the multitudes of sacrifices and labour that academics and intellectuals had poured into their aspirations for Bangladesh, often at the cost of their own safety and livelihood.
20 November 2024, 18:00 PM

5 Postcolonial novels: Voices from the Bengal Province

Here is a short list of her chants in fiction, creating a narrative of Bangali postcolonial resistance
17 November 2024, 15:30 PM

My heart is a gilded oligarch

My heart is an oligarch: A staunch, pot-bellied, knuckle-cracking middle-aged man lounging carelessly, lazily  in his sitting room with his limbs spread out on a settee
15 November 2024, 18:00 PM

The vampires of Bangla literature

Pale, aristocratic, seductive forces lurking in the dark—when we think of vampires, we often perceive them through a western lens
15 November 2024, 18:00 PM

Taking folk melodies of Bangladesh to the world

Folk Melody of Bangladesh: An Anthology of Bangladesh Folk Music in Standard Notation is a music anthology that compiles 204 carefully chosen folk songs of Bangladesh that date from the 16th century.
13 November 2024, 18:00 PM

Down the rabbit hole of science and art

The city of Prague, now the capital of the Czech Republic, was once the breeding hotspot of the 20th century’s greatest writers, scientists, scholars, and activists.
13 November 2024, 18:00 PM