BOOK REVIEW: FICTION / Let the queen rest in peace
23 October 2025, 14:55 PM
Book Review: Nonfiction / Charting the south’s path
22 October 2025, 18:00 PM
FICTION BOOK REVIEW: Fragments of memory and regret
22 October 2025, 18:00 PM
ESSAY / Leonard Cohen: Verses of mercy and turmoil
22 October 2025, 13:45 PM
THE SHELF / 3 Partition stories for young readers
21 October 2025, 13:45 PM
BOOK REVIEW: FICTION / A bit of Fry & Homer
18 October 2025, 11:15 AM
Fiction / Free at last
17 October 2025, 18:58 PM
REFLECTIONS / Autumnal offerings for seasonal readers
17 October 2025, 18:58 PM
THE SHELF / 5 books to rescue you from brainrot
17 October 2025, 14:45 PM
Amartya Sen’s ‘Home in the World’: The life of an intellectual
“When I was born, Rabindranath persuaded my mother that it was boring to stick to well-used names and he proposed a new name for me…Amartya”, writes the author and economist.
13 April 2022, 18:00 PM
Christy Lefteri's 'Songbirds': The invisible life of migrant domestic workers
“Absence is the highest form of presence.” This Joycean quote could not be truer for Nisha.
13 April 2022, 18:00 PM
Songs of our soil: In praise of Mymensingh’s Bangla folk ballads
Folk-ballads are living archives that represent the imagination, values, ideas, and aesthetics of the people to whom they belong. Folk-ballads are living archives that represent the imagination, values, ideas, and aesthetics of the people to whom they belong.
13 April 2022, 18:00 PM
Arshi Mortuza explores mental health and identity crises in ‘One Minute Past Midnight’
Reversal of fairy tale tropes and themes of mental health and alienation run dominantly across One Minute Past Midnight (Nymphea Publications, 2022), a debut collection of poetry and prose by poet and teacher Arshi Mortuza.
8 April 2022, 09:59 AM
Carole Angier on writing the biography of WG Sebald
In Speak, Silence: In Search of W.G. Sebald (Bloomsbury, 2021), you write that the author’s British publisher, Christopher MacLehose, was in a dilemma to decide on Sebald’s genre of writing. After writing about his novel and his life for so long, how would you define Sebald’s genre?
6 April 2022, 18:00 PM
Lee Lai's 'Stone Fruit': Jokes, rhymes, and the depths of relationships
One of the most searing scenes in Lee Lai’s magnificent graphic novel, Stone Fruit (Fantagraphics, 2021) is when a young child, Nessie,
6 April 2022, 18:00 PM
Why it’s okay to forget the books you read
What makes them my favourites, if I can’t remember the names of the engrossing characters or the details of the intricate plots in some of my “favourite” books?
6 April 2022, 18:00 PM
Sri Lankan lives in turmoil: A riotous rendition of “Funny Boy”
Selvadurai’s book, set against the backdrop of escalating political tension in Sri Lanka prior to the 1983 riots, portrays the effect of the Tamil-Sinhalese clash on the personal lives of his characters, before giving a glimpse of the riots in the very last chapter.
5 April 2022, 08:50 AM
Revisiting ‘The Midnight Library’ and the beauty of a flawed life
Each hardcover spine contains the story of how Nora’s life would have turned out if she had chosen differently—if she had picked a different career path, moved to a different country or married a different person.
2 April 2022, 12:38 PM
You’re obsessed with Wordle because…
Why is Wordle so addictive and why are a lot of people so obsessed with it?
1 April 2022, 10:35 AM
The Whole Kahani’s ‘Tongues and Bellies’: A promising literary confection
Tongues and Bellies, published by Linen Press (2021), is described by its blurb as an anthology where “sensual and surprising stories play a tantalising game of hide and seek with lies and truth”.
31 March 2022, 14:03 PM
Shuvashish Roy’s new teen book incorporates SDGs into fiction
Chevening scholar, author, and head of business development at The Daily Star, Shuvashish Roy, has published his first work of fiction, Chamakiya O Biggani Bhajaghata (Gyankosh Prokashoni, 2022), released at the Ekushey Boi Mela this year.
31 March 2022, 11:24 AM
Ranjana Biswas, researcher on Bede community, wins Anannya literary award 2022
Ranjana Biswas, an essayist and researcher, received the award at a ceremony held on March 22 at the Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Dhaka.
29 March 2022, 12:19 PM
Lessons from the diplomatic roads not taken
Neil Armstrong’s “giant leap for mankind” comes to mind while reading Hemayet Uddin’s Diplomacy in Obscurity: A Memoir (University Press Limited, 2021).
23 March 2022, 18:00 PM
Alamgir Kabir: “Zahir in Kolkata”
17 April, 1971. I reached Kolkata from Agartala on the previous day. Word reaches me that Zahir Raihan has also arrived at Kolkata on the same day.
23 March 2022, 18:00 PM
8 trips to the Boi Mela this year. Here’s what I thought.
This year’s Boi Mela was special to me. Growing up, I was never too sold on the hype around the fair—there were always too many crowds;
23 March 2022, 18:00 PM
SHORT STORY OF THE MONTH: The lingering shadows of grief in ‘The Faraway Things’
Lesedi is not “right in the head”. He avoids talking and discards words that do not make sense to him like garbage.
16 March 2022, 18:00 PM
A reliable, much needed text on corporate tax law in Bangladesh by Barrister Junayed A. Chowdhury
Complexity in any area of law leads to specialization. But it also comes with the risk of tunnel vision, of failing to visualize the bigger picture.
16 March 2022, 18:00 PM
Abdullah Al Imran's 'Kalchakra': A story of financial collapse and invincibility
We get to know only so much about what happens around us until literature takes an interest in it. The same would have happened with the shutdown of the jute mill in Khulna, nearly two decades ago, if a novel like Kalchakra (Annesha Prokashon, 2018) had not presented it to us.
16 March 2022, 18:00 PM
Why you should read Sally Rooney after all
Can there be decisive action without discourse, even if it takes the form of one or two conversations between friends in a work of fiction?
16 March 2022, 18:00 PM