BOOK REVIEW: FICTION / ‘Chaashabhushar Sontan’: A quest for many questions and answers
5 hour(s) ago
Books & Literature
At a pivotal historical crossroads, the evocative novel Chaashabhushar Sontan has stirred a profound reflection within the socio-economic and cultural landscape of Bangladesh.
BOOK REVIEW: NONFICTION / The story of Bangladesh’s books
5 hour(s) ago
Books & Literature
CREATIVE NONFICTION / Our Eids and Puja in Azimpur
30 May 2026, 00:00 AM
Books & Literature
CREATIVE NONFICTION / The flavours of Eid and the memory of home
30 May 2026, 00:00 AM
Books & Literature
The Shelf / Chand raat in Dhaka through the eyes of literary characters
27 May 2026, 23:33 PM
The Shelf
THE SHELF / The knife is always ready 5 books for the season of sacrifice
27 May 2026, 00:00 AM
Books & Literature
BOOK REVIEW: POETRY / Pias Majid: The poet of the moonlight conference
27 May 2026, 00:00 AM
Books & Literature
Nazrul cannot be contained within a singular frame
25 May 2026, 09:00 AM
Culture
Essay / Anti-colonial resistance in Kazi Nazrul Islam’s essays
23 May 2026, 00:00 AM
Essay
Alt-lit / What you can’t remember will definitely hurt you: Antimemes and qntm’s Antimemetics SCP saga
How do you contain something you can’t record or remember? How do you fight a war against an enemy with effortless, perfect camouflage, when you can never even know that you’re at war?
Interview / Faith, patriarchy, and resistance: Banu Mushtaq on ‘Heart Lamp’
7 May 2026, 00:00 AM
Event Report / DEH-ULAB hosts Earth Day 2026 talk on climate fiction and water issues
22 April 2026, 18:41 PM
News Report / From the ashes: Gaza’s first grassroots library rises amid genocide
12 April 2026, 21:43 PM
Two Palestinian writers, Omar Hamad and Ibrahim Massri, have been working since late 2025 to build a library in Gaza during the ongoing genocide. The Phoenix Library is located in the heart of Gaza City and, per a post from the library’s Twitter/X account, is fast approaching its official opening date despite the Gaza Strip and all of occupied Palestine still being subject to Israeli apartheid violence.
NEWS REPORT / Arundhati Roy’s Mother Mary Comes to Me secures 2026 NBCC Award, continues global recognition
28 March 2026, 17:07 PM
Celebrated author and activist Arundhati Roy’s 2025 memoir Mother Mary Comes to Me (Penguin, 2025) continues to solidify its place in the zeitgeist and its cultural impact well into 2026, with its recent win at this year’s US National Book Critics Circle (NBCC) Award in the Autobiography category.
Atopor Shabdayan becomes Bangladesh partner of global poetry platform Lyrikline
22 March 2026, 10:37 AM
Creative nonfiction / Growing up with a new nation: The Dhaka we once knew
28 March 2026, 03:42 AM
Creative non-fiction
Children of 1972–73 came of age alongside Bangladesh itself. In Azimpur’s close‑knit colony, a telephone became a neighbourhood lifeline, television was a shared ritual, and the Buriganga was our afternoon escape.
FLASH FICTION / Chand raat at Mohakhali
20 March 2026, 20:20 PM
Essay / The Cosmere is getting adapted: Here is where to start reading
14 March 2026, 21:02 PM
CREATIVE NONFICTION / Sweetened ice and other lessons in kindness
14 March 2026, 01:59 AM
Essay / A meaningless world: Sartre, Camus, Waliullah, and Badal Sircar
14 March 2026, 01:48 AM
CREATIVE NONFICTION / The devil wears Maria B
7 March 2026, 02:13 AM
The shelf / 6 Books to contextualise the present conflict in the Gulf
1 March 2026, 21:07 PM
ESSAY / Romance, radical hope, and the modern happily ever after
27 February 2026, 00:05 AM
‘The Green Knight’ adaptation subverts the tenets of chivalric romance
The mystical riddle that was the film, The Green Knight (2021), was initially just that for me: a riddle. It was one of those films where I felt like my experience of watching it would be more rewarding if I had some idea of the actual story it was based on.
15 September 2021, 18:00 PM
‘Ek Ashchorjo Phul Binoy Majumdar’ is a rare treat for fans of the poet
Jointly edited by Ahasan Hydar and Snigdhadip Chakraborty, Ek Ashchorjo Phul Binoy Majumdar (Ashroy Prokashon, 2021) is a valuable book on the life and work of Bengali poet Binoy Majumdar, who was born on September 17, 1934.
15 September 2021, 18:00 PM
A much-needed Bangla text on the history of Sufism
Sufibad O Sufider Shorup Shondhaney (‘In search of the nature of Sufism and Sufis’), written by Syed Rezaul Karim and published in 2020 by Bangla Academy, is a welcome addition to the meager collection of books written in Bangla on Sufism.
15 September 2021, 18:00 PM
Tarana Husain Khan's 'The Begum and the Dastan': Patriarchy is a labyrinth that defies time
I am convinced that while writing her book, The Begum and the Dastan (Westland Publications, 2021), Tarana Husain Khan’s aim was to leave her readers in a literary stupor, dizzy and yearning for more.
15 September 2021, 18:00 PM
The 2021 Booker Prize shortlist looks to the future
The 2021 Booker Prize shortlist was revealed on September 15, with six of the previously announced 13-novel longlist making the cut. Each of the six authors are to receive GBP 2,500, while the winner, to be announced on November 3 at the BBC Radio Theatre, will receive GBP 5,000. Notably, and much like 2020’s competition, only one British author is named in the shortlist.
15 September 2021, 13:00 PM
UPL launches Ananda Bikash Chakma’s new book, ‘Carpus Mahal Theke Shanti Chukti'
Dr Anand Bikash Chakma, Associate Professor at the department of History, Chittagong University, launched his book, Carpus Mahal Theke Shanti Chukti: Parbotto Chattogram-e Rashtrio Nitir Itihash (University Press Limited, 2021), at a virtual programme organised by UPL on September 9, 2021.
12 September 2021, 09:29 AM
The Plague in Bengal: Literary Glimpses and Anecdotes
About 122 years before the Covid-19 pandemic Bengal was struck by bubonic plague, which has left its traces in Bangla fiction and life writings.
10 September 2021, 18:00 PM
Obhoy’s Insomnia
An abrupt noise woke Obhoy up in the middle of the night and throughout the rest of the night his eyelids would not shut. What was the matter with him? He had been sound asleep; then suddenly he woke up as if someone was battering at the gate of his senses.
10 September 2021, 18:00 PM
Bookcentric announces September 2021 reading challenge
Dhaka’s Bookcentric library has announced their September 2021 reading challenge in collaboration with Daily Star Books. For this month, Bookcentric will look at books that feature a “utopia” or, conversely, a “dystopia”, given their thematic similarities, from Cormac McCarthy’s The Road (2006) and Ursula K Le Guin’s The Dispossessed (1974) to Begum Rokeya’s Sultana’s Dream (1905), among others.
8 September 2021, 18:00 PM
Susanna Clarke's 'Piranesi': How real is the world we imagine?
In the 1700s, there lived an Italian artist, architect, and archaeologist who saw in the world far more than what was in it. Giovanni Battista Piranesi captured his world, among other things, through prints: the most famous of which are the Views, an imitation of the classical remains of Rome, and the imaginary renditions of the Prisons.
8 September 2021, 18:00 PM
Jalal-Ud-Din Ahmad: A headmaster’s memoir
Pursuit of Excellence in Teaching: A Memoir (University Press Limited, 2021) chronicles the life and legacy of Jalal-Ud-Din Ahmad, a gifted educator who grew up to be the first graduate in his village in Feni, East Pakistan, and whose humble beginnings culminated in his winning the Presidential Award for “Best Headmaster in Pakistan” in 1967.
8 September 2021, 18:00 PM
The allure of the campus novel
In Susannah Clarke’s Piranesi, whose review rests atop this article, the narrator labels time not by calendar dates but by the things that happen to him—the birds who visit his wing of the world, the tides that come swinging or gently.
8 September 2021, 18:00 PM
JCB Prize for Literature announces 2021 longlist
The annual competition, which has been hailed as “India's most valuable literature prize”, offers INR 2,500,000 (USD 35,000) to its winner for distinguished work of fiction by an Indian writer working in or translated to English.
8 September 2021, 07:28 AM
Hardback edition released of ‘Inherited Memories’, Goethe-Institut and Zubaan Books’ project on the 1947 partition
Zubaan Books has released a hardback edition of Inherited Memories: Third Generation Perspectives on Partition in the East, concerning the still-felt ramifications of the 1947 partition.
5 September 2021, 11:37 AM
Story of Bengal and Bengalis: The Bengali Homeland and its Inhabitants
With the onset of the new millennium in the 21st century, there seems to be a revival of interest in the space, in the eastern part of South Asia, historically known as Bengal, and the people who inhabit this space, the Bengalis.
3 September 2021, 18:00 PM
FEMALE WARRIORS
I had decided to write a brief review of Selima Chowdhury’s book when it was first published, but what with one thing or another making me put it off, a couple of years rolled by, and we found ourselves caught up in a pandemic with no end in sight.
3 September 2021, 18:00 PM
ABUL MANSUR AHMAD: Our Language and our Literature
On the occasion of the birth anniversary of author, journalist, and politician Abul Mansur Ahmad (1898-1979) on September 3, 2021, we publish an excerpt from his essay, "Our Language and Our Literature", first published in The Concept magazine in 1965 and later collected in the book, 'End of a Betrayal and Restoration of Lahore Resolution' (1975).
1 September 2021, 18:00 PM
Radio, ghazals, and “Islami gaan”: What Nazrul’s shift to music said about his syncretism
The adoption of the ghazal by Nazrul, with renewed fervour in the late ’20s and ’30s, signaled an understanding that his earlier literary and linguistic world was an impermanent one, as was a politics in which the unity of Hindus and Muslims was achieved through an appeal to a shared culture and language.
1 September 2021, 18:00 PM
Radhika Singha's 'The Coolie's Great War': The forgotten ones of World War I
As of December 31, 1919, a total of 1.4 million Indians were recruited to various theatres of the First World War. Among them, approximately 563,369 were “followers or non-combatants”.
1 September 2021, 18:00 PM
Elif Shafak’s ‘The Island of Missing Trees’: Fragments of an uprooted people
The people we meet in Elif Shafak’s The Island of Missing Trees (Viking, 2021) are haunted by terrible tragedies from several years past, by a beautiful island divided into two.
1 September 2021, 18:00 PM
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