Yale University Department of History chair Alan Mikhail’s new book God’s Shadow: Sultan Selim, His Ottoman Empire, and the Making of the Modern World (Liveright, 2020) takes a much-welcomed fresh look at Selim I, a figure of signature cultural and historical importance in Turkish history.

Kazi Nazrul Islam needs no introduction to those familiar with Bangla literature. He and his works are, for cogent reasons, less known in other circles.

My mother has a habit of staring intently at reflective surfaces. When alone, she will look directly into mirrors with a vacant look in her eyes.

American poet Louise Gluck won the 2020 Nobel Prize in Literature for works exploring family and childhood in an "unmistakable...voice that with austere beauty makes individual existence universal", the Swedish Academy has said.

When the lockdown was enforced and we were all confined to our homes, I began organising my bookshelf and no longer had stray paperbacks all over the house. I could finally spread my legs while taking a nap. This was received with great enthusiasm and approval of my mother, and confused glares of my cat.

Sherlock Holmes, the famous detective of 221B Baker Street, has a sister. Her name is Enola Holmes, and despite being much younger than him, she shows powers of deductive reasoning that foretell her advent into the world of mystery and intrigue.

Did you watch our very special Teacher’s Day Facebook and YouTube Live with the immensely popular Professor Asrar Chowdhury of

Unpublished short stories of between 2,000-5,000 words written in English, Bangla, Chinese, French, Greek, Turkish and several other

Body trembling, tears falling

Every once in a moonlit midnight

Cricketers are accustomed to hearing about cricket balls being caught but not of a ball being brought into Court. Appeals concerning a ball at Lords, home of cricket, are familiar enough but an Appeal in the Lords? In 1951 cricket figured in a landmark legal decision in the House of Lords.

(I guess) some birds don’t return to roosts.

Tens of thousands of men sailed across the ocean to a land they’d never before heard the name of. They fought long and hard, in the world’s

When I was in 9th grade, a friend introduced me to the works of director Lars von Trier, starting with the film Dogville (2003). I’d never seen a feature film play out so well, in such intensity, with nothing but a largely empty sound stage for a film set.

Bright and cold on a winter afternoon, in the hours leading up to lunch, the kitchen of a Bengali family sizzles with tension. Refrigerated meat is thawed and spices are crushed and pestled.

I stood before the door of the house where my grandmother once lived. Age and infirmity had jaded what might have once been a proper door.

Shutters clicked away. Flashes dazzled eyes. News reporters jostled with each other to hold out their mikes as far as their arms allowed. Busy fingers gripped their ballpoints tighter.

When it comes to book reviews, I have found an interesting paradox—the better a book is, the easier it becomes to write about.

Literary historian David Damrosch’s travails with World Literature are charted most often by those within academia. During the Covid-19 inertia

Travis Dandro’s King of King Court: A Memoir (Drawn & Quarterly, 2019) is a large, dense book that reads light and fast. The coming of age story is packed with the raw emotional power of the author’s traumatic childhood.