fiction
Facing the nightmare of darkness
Lighting struck everywhere. Amidst the enchanted woods, the howls of wolves echoed with a joyous "Awoo!".
29 February 2024, 09:49 AM
Sweet shop vendors
We will chase after stringless kites, Down the road
29 February 2024, 09:46 AM
Dhaka 2084: Interview of a Time Traveller
The sudden appearance — and the equally sudden disappearance — of a middle-aged woman named Eli Kaizer, who claimed to be a time traveller, has caught the attention of not only our city, but the entire world.
26 February 2024, 14:11 PM
Interim
That was the first time in my life I’d smelled charred meat. I could tell it was different from the kind you’re supposed to eat, and my mother had to hold me as I threw up violently on the side of the street.
17 February 2024, 14:45 PM
A Born Reader
Surveying the decorated wall now vibrantly alive with Winnie the Pooh and Harry Potter characters, Sarah allowed herself a satisfied grin.
16 February 2024, 18:00 PM
Girlfriends, girlhood and everything else Dolly Alderton knows about love
Review of "Everything I Know About Love: A Memoir" (Penguin, 2018)
11 February 2024, 14:55 PM
Screams and Schadenfreude
TRIGGER WARNING: Suicide, death, and gore.
9 February 2024, 18:00 PM
5 new releases to look out for at Boi Mela this week
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.
9 February 2024, 13:45 PM
Tucked between moving trains and elegiac dead-ends
Some among us might have wondered what it feels like to hold a lit bomb between our palms. One that will go off inevitably yet its spark, heat, force, weight, and pulsating nature are so fascinating that we are unable to put it down or look away, all the while knowing at the end of the wick we too will be destroyed—a chosen death, a voluntary annihilation.
7 February 2024, 18:00 PM
A Solo Exhibition
Never in his wildest imaginations had Aniket thought that everything would come together so well. Nearly everyone he invited had come.
26 January 2024, 18:00 PM
The Melancholic Man
The whole courtroom held their breath, waiting to hear Nizam's answer. As he nodded in affirmation, the enraged audience got off their seats to beat up the accused.
19 January 2024, 18:00 PM
Chess Grandmaster
My father reasoned that he had grown up in a poor land that had been plundered by the colonial powers and he was not going to give away another national treasure
13 January 2024, 06:00 AM
Wings Across A City Wall
Shimu and Tushar had grown up together on an alley in the Mirpur area of Dhaka city. Their neighbouring houses were separated only by a brick wall, about two meters high. The branches of a tree growing beside Tushar’s house overhung the wall, its foliage shading a part of Shimu’s courtyard.
12 January 2024, 18:00 PM
White-eyed Corpse
The beast bellowed below Mushfiq’s bedroom window, propelling rushes of tingles within him. He smiled.
10 January 2024, 13:45 PM
Jhumpa Lahiri’s Italian renovations
Jhumpa Lahiri has always been the rare author whose prowess in the art of the short-story far surpassed her novelistic talents.
3 January 2024, 18:00 PM
2023 in Review
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.
2 January 2024, 13:55 PM
Payback time
I’m not sure when I first realised that we’d met before. In the beginning, you were just the elderly man I often noticed pottering around our communal rooftop.
29 December 2023, 18:00 PM
Her last words
The slamming of the front door sounded an ominous note, warning of trouble to come.
29 December 2023, 18:00 PM
Life through the lens of an electricity pole
Today, I am covered in lines. Rust from the rain, and the occasional overflowing water from the drain paint my feet in unchangeable colours.
28 December 2023, 00:00 AM
A pleasant pool of magic I would happily drown in
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.
25 December 2023, 15:55 PM