It doesn’t get sweeter than a 90-year-old curd seller being awarded the second highest civilian award in Bangladesh, the Ekushey Padak.

Speakers talked about the losses and the gains of the meaning of text after having undergone translation, about the responsibility and the power that a translator holds in taking an author’s words and transforming it for a different reader base.

With rows upon rows of book stalls offering everything from timeless classics to contemporary bestsellers, navigating through this maze of books can be both exhilarating and overwhelming

The Ekushey Boi Mela has been a memorable cultural odyssey and this year has been no different. For you, Star Lifestyle brings forth the top 5 highlights from the Ekushey Boi Mela 2024!

With the advent of the most anticipated literary festival for lovers of the written art, we have curated a list of five books for you to keep your eyes open for at Amar Ekushey Boi Mela this week. 

There will be a total of seven sessions held over the course of February 8, 9, and 10 where various topics will be discussed by participants, ranging from litterateurs, artists, and accomplished literary personalities.

Since the COVID-19 pandemic, we have seen a major decrease in not just the number of books being published per year, but also in the profits made by publishing houses.

Readers follow trending genres and the latest writing practices, which change within seconds. Keeping up with these trends is difficult for writers

Anne was a realistic novelist—and one who was very much ahead of her time. She was a fiery feminist, and dismissive of creating any Gothic atmosphere

Readers often look for relatability in the stories and characters they are reading but Nabokov doesn’t give his readers that comfort or spoon feed them. Rather, he challenges them to eschew feeling compelled by Humbert’s justification of his innocence

During the mid 20th century, when female wordsmiths somewhat flourished with their newly published works, they were still suppressed under the dominance of male authors.

When you still approach reading in its ritualistic form every once in a while, it won’t feel like you’re “making time to read” but simply reading.

Anam chose to centre her reflections and readings on the theme of protests.

While history has never been a one-man show, viewing it through the eyes of influential leaders can lend us a bigger picture.

Some of these works have inspected the complex lives of modern Bangalis while some have traced the contours of our past often not examined. Here’s your chance to read some of the releases of this year by Bangladeshi authors, if you haven’t read them yet. 

The changes in our reading habits this year

As the novel progresses, you peel back layers of history between Claire and her grandparents and realise that the Korea issue isn’t as straightforward as our protagonist imagined.

What I loved most as a reader about her is that her strength was not displayed in the conventional ways that most fantasy books tend to use to depict a powerful woman.

The melancholic, tuned nostalgia of finishing a journey was being caressed by the soft yet upbeat rhythm of the journey coming forth.

At a time when everyone is grappling with financial instability while combating the icy spree, Bill is grateful enough to have survived another year with his wife Eileen and five daughters.