This year, while strolling across the Ekushey Boi Mela, I came across a variety of styles in stall decor.

Countless stories, poems, essays, and novels have been written about the Bangla language movement of 1952. Biographies of martyrs have been authored.

Growing up in a bicultural household, I was exposed to two languages, two cultures, as a child. I picked up both the languages as my mother tongue—Bangla and Rakhine. Eventually, a third language,

Popular publication house, Gyankosh Prokashoni, hosted an Author Talk at its stall premises yesterday, on February 18. In an attempt to connect authors with their readers, Gyankosh took on this initiative and mentioned that such enterprise would help in bringing people closer to reading and promote bookish conversations. 

Amar Ekushey Boi Mela has been one of the most celebrated literary events of the country for decades. Every February, this book fair celebrates our love for language and literature, with a festive mood that lasts for a month. But what does it take to prepare for a fair this big? 

This novel explores the adventures of one Rustam, better known as Palowan Bhai. In Dhaka, even the wild animals fear Palowan Bhai for his quick-to-rise temper. But what happens when he visits the calm community of a village?

Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic (Houghton Mifflin, 2006) unfurls with heated family dysfunction, subtle and soaring ugliness, shame, and queer confusion. This is a story of a closeted gay father and his queer daughter, and how their bearings align.

First, the government authorities are always behind in planning and leave things for the last minute to reach concrete decisions, and often, these decisions don’t take into consideration pragmatic solutions that are sustainable and maintainable in the long term.

In a particularly American but artsy, cinematic production depicting the friendship between David Lipsky and David Foster Wallace,

Shortlisted for the JCB Literature Prize 2021, Name Place Animal Thing (Zubaan Books, 2021) by Daribha Lyndem evokes feelings of nostalgia in a reader merely with its title—it is a popular game among kids. Now, as I hold the novella in my hand, my heart is in a strange turmoil.

Winter was slowly taking off, with the February breeze following through, with the falling of the Debdaru leaves, with the advent of a new season.

In “Mother’s Milk”, a short story by Tahmima Anam which appears in Our Many Longings: Contemporary Short Fiction from Bangladesh (Dhauli Books, 2021), an unnamed narrator gives us brief snatches of her life as she attempts to endure…something. One can’t really call it an incident; it is, seemingly, more a state of being that requires her to keep joy at bay. Consciously, deliberately.

Edited by Kudret Bulbul, a professor of Political Science and Public Administration at Ankara Yildirim Beyazit University, Turkey, Md Nazmul Islam,

Too often, the representation of Muslims in arts and culture has been tainted by the shadow of “extremism”.

In a book launch held at the capital’s Bengal Shilpalay today, Gyantapas Abdur Razzaq Foundation and University Press Limited held a discussion session on Professor Razzaq’s Political Parties in India, his 1950 PhD thesis for the London School of Economics, published now for the first time in book form. 

On a particularly slow day, all I have to do is sit down with a Nonte-Phonte comic book, and my troubles will lay forgotten to one side. I imagine it’s the same for most people who are fans of Narayan Debnath and his fictional characters from the small town of Paschimpara, West Bengal.

A designer and illustrator whose work focuses on human rights, feminism, and South Asian identity, Pakistani artist Shehzil Malik has just created an artwork based on Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain's novella Sultana's Dream (1905).

What comes to your mind when you encounter a graphic novel called Shapod Shoney (Graphic Bangla, 2021), which translates to ‘Along with the Beast’, the cover art showing a man holding a rifle under the dark sky?

A designer and illustrator whose work focuses on human rights, feminism, and South Asian identity, Malik has just created an artwork based on Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain’s novella Sultana’s Dream (1905), which imagines a feminist utopia where women dominate the world of science, labour, and their homes. 

Logo Land  (Lecturis, 2021), a new book by Bangladeshi author Amit Biswas, takes a look at the origin and meaning of logos, exploring the depths of shapes, colours, and forms in the municipality logos in the Netherlands.