One does not need to remember Rabindranath on the occasion of the anniversary of his death—22 Srabon or August 7 to be precise.

It's true, I feel differently about books that I previously disliked or enjoyed reading and books that I want as a physical presence in my life

In the post-9/11 world, no country’s name has been evoked more than Turkey’s (or its newly rebranded name of Türkiye) in public discussions by foreign policy pundits and politicians alike, to demonstrate the harmonious symbiosis of the East and West, Islam and secularism, and tradition and modernity.

When a book mentions one of my favourite authors, W. Somerset Maugham, and the short description suggests betrayal, intrigue, secret affairs, political uprisings, failed marriages, and a whodunnit, there’s little I can do but take it.

Kaveh Akbar’s Martyr! is unruly and endearing. Akbar’s years as a poet has given his debut novel an honesty that shines through the book’s arduous structure. And for all of Martyr!’s exhilarating tone and emotional trek, the difficulties of writing a novel on addiction, martyrdom, death, and meaning is evident when one reads it.

It’s hard not to recall our many conversations about literature as I try to summarise Shah Tazrian Ashrafi’s debut collection of short stories. They were always short discussions, opening and closing off in spurts, as happens over text. Exclamations over a new essay collection by Zadie Smith, or a new novel by Isabel Allende.

Begum’s Blunder is a clever adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s Lady Windermere’s Fan. The play transports the Victorian setting to the imaginary Behrampur, the heyday of the Nawabs in India. With Naila Azad Nupur’s direction, and Sadaf Saaz working her behind-the-scenes magic as the producer, the production by Kaleidoscope projects lights on the prism of Wilde’s 1892 play to find their contemporary refractions and reflections in colonial India.

There are few novelists as cruel as Hanya Yanagihara—and in A Little Life (Doubleday, 2015), her pen draws blood. Nine years on, the controversy of the 800-page character study of an irreparably broken protagonist is still ablaze with accusations that it sadistically exploits trauma for profit.

This week, Kyla Zhao, the author of Valley Verified (Penguin Random House, 2024), graced us with an exclusive interview to give us insights into the changing trends in Asian American literature.

'We are truly prisoners of the mind', says Sanya Rushdi, the author-narrator of Hospital (Giramondo Publishing, 2023)

A big believer in social exchanges and developing safe spaces to position art as a medium of healing in community, Thami works on ceremonial interventions, performances, drawings, zine-making, fly posting, and public intervention, brought together by participant involvement

This year, to celebrate Sister Library Dhaka turning four, we acquired a collection of 100 zines curated by the library’s founder, Aqui Thami. The collection will be available for reading at the Goethe-Institut library from June onwards. With the acquisition of this collection, we are finally connected to the mothership Sister Library in Bombay.

There is something in the tactility of books that even non-readers find themselves admiring, and readers more so.

As long-awaited summer showers arrive to offer respite from the sweltering heat we have been experiencing, here are a few books to accompany you as you cosy up in bed and watch the rain beat down on your windows.

I recently had the sublime experience of watching the recent adaptation of Frank Herbert’s Dune (Chilton Books, 1965), a 2021 and 2023 two-part movie series directed by the passionate Denis Villeneuve. It is, in my mind, a cinematic triumph, and I am thrilled to witness the surge interest these movies have driven for Herbert’s science fiction book series of the same name.

The Three-Body Problem is the first book in the Remembrance of Earth’s Past (2006) trilogy by Cixin Liu, a renowned Chinese author.

Anisul Hoque’s Kokhono Amar Maa-ke is the story of appalling sacrifices made by a mother and her unwavering determination to secure a bright future for her children.

Inevitably, Kaiser Haq’s The New Frontier and Other Odds and Ends in Verse and Prose is about the poet, his poetic predilections, and situatedness at this time of human existence. In many ways it is typical of the verse we have come to expect from our leading poet in English for a long time now, but in other ways it articulates his present-day concerns in new and striking poetic measures. 

Nobel Prize-winning Canadian writer Alice Munro, whose exquisitely crafted tales of the loves, ambitions and travails of small-town women in her native land made her a globally acclaimed master of the short story, has died at the age of 92, her publisher said on Tuesday

Articles on Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s last novel to be published by his sons against the author’s wishes built up my anticipation and I couldn’t wait for April to arrive. Thanks to Bookworm, I got my copy the moment they had it in store and I read it twice. It didn’t impress me the first time as it was just a string of chapters describing how a promiscuous woman drove herself into the arms of different men on her annual August 16 visits to a Caribbean island.