Creative nonfiction / Growing up with a new nation: The Dhaka we once knew

Edward Said is one of only a handful of intellectuals who can truly be said to have educated and influenced multiple generations on the Palestinian cause and the different prisms of thought through which we now look at literature, art, and history. In many ways, we are the heirs of the man who popularised the term, “Orientalism”; a man who championed the voices and struggles of the Global South in the Anglo-American sphere.

If you thought the unapologetically outspoken Starr Carter from The Hate U Give (Balzer + Bray, 2017) was a force to be reckoned with, it’s time you met the man who raised her to be so: Maverick Carter.

Land—its ownership, its deep history, its uses and abuses—forms the subject of best-selling historian Simon Winchester’s new book,

Prolific writer Rabeya Khatun, a recipient of the Bangla Academy Literary Award 1973, Ekushey Padak 1993, and the Independence Day Award 2017, passed away on January 3, 2021 after suffering from a long period of health complications.

The epigraph of The Old Drift (Hogarth Press, 2020), taken from Vigil’s The Aeneid, briefly narrates the story of a diverse civilisation thriving on the banks of Lethe, the river of forgetfulness that “somnolently” drifts past a “populous throng” of spirits.

Asha Ray is a coder who, upon reconnecting with a high school love interest, abandons her PhD program to write a new algorithm for an exclusive tech firm.

Many centuries ago, Chinese pilgrims came up the Bay of Bengal on their way to Buddhist sites in the Subcontinent. We have no record of their conversations with the people of Bengal but it was the accurate accounts of early Chinese travellers that enabled archaeologists in the 19th century to rediscover the lost Buddhist sites like that inside a hill at Paharpur.

I forbade the clouds to sprawl around this flood plain- the clouds unendingly somersault around my windowpane at the beckoning of drooping hillocks though.

with its fortress of mahals, brimming with Earth’s treasure, gardens and illusions from the eye of the vulture’s flight, past the roadside dhabas, past the colossal statues and solitary temples, dotting the horizon resting comfortably atop Bygone mosques,

The scents and colours of the morning arouse the wetness of the night. The dewdrop splendour awakens the dawning sunrise drenched in colours

Out of all the books that I had to speed through for work this year, Rumaan Alam’s Leave the World Behind was an exception.

As the final pages of 2020 flick away, a lot of us find ourselves cracking open our diaries, or signing into our reading apps to log in the last few books of the year.

We asked some of the prominent writers and academics from Bangladesh about the books they most enjoyed in 2020. Some of them confessed that the year has been too difficult to find much time for reading.

The wind afire

Girl, Woman, Other by Bernadine Evaristo is a beautiful rendition of the intertwining lives of people in modern Britain. Twelve people, most of whom are women, each dedicated a chapter, are seen in the best and worst moments of their lives.

I couldn’t get to my university hostel. From Petaling Jaya to Pantai Hill Park, KL Central and Mid Valley, changing one bus after the other; no one knew where my hostel was.

It is a truth universally acknowledged by her many fans that Jane Austen’s sharp wit, complex characters, subtle social reproach, and tantalising storytelling are almost unparalleled.

The mind of ten-year-old Jas—the narrator of Marieke Lucas Rijneveld’s 2020 International Booker Prize-winning The Discomfort of Evening (Faber Books,

In August 2017, the Myanmar military perpetrated a genocide on the Rohingyas, an ethnic group residing in Northern Rakhine. Large numbers of Rohingyas were killed,

Is it just us, or do the cold winds of December make you want to bring down your favourite childhood stories, classics hardcovers, and delicious thrillers from your shelves too?