What to read / What we’re reading this week
14 May 2026, 00:00 AM
What to read
Book Review: Nonfiction / Fara Dabhoiwala’s history misses the one thing that truly matters
1 May 2026, 00:00 AM
Non-fiction review
Reflection / Harper Lee at 100: An enduring echo of justice
28 April 2026, 20:10 PM
Literature
Tribute / Humayun Azad and the courage to dissent
24 April 2026, 00:00 AM
Books & Literature
Interview / Writing what silence carries: Mohua Chinappa on memory, pain, and inheritance
24 April 2026, 00:00 AM
Features
Not just child’s play: Bengal’s rhymes as cultural memory
13 April 2026, 20:12 PM
Culture
Book Review: Nonfiction / Love, wounds, and the making of ‘Hemingway’s Women’
10 April 2026, 00:00 AM
Books & Literature
An Ekushey Book Fair breaking with tradition
21 September 2025, 13:05 PM
Books & Literature
BOOK REVIEW: FICTION / An outlandish jumble of cults, cannibalism, and colonial violence
19 March 2025, 18:00 PM
Books
BOOK REVIEW: NONFICTION / The making of Bangladesh in the global sixties
19 March 2025, 18:00 PM
Books
Memories at War
I often consider war as a quasi-synonym for memory. After all, memory is nothing but our present in constant war with our glorified, vilified, expressed, suppressed, erased, and fragmented selves floating in past space and time.
20 March 2020, 18:00 PM
Hedonist
A thorn in the bushes they beat around
20 March 2020, 18:00 PM
The Journey Back Home
During the Pakistan days my father was in the army, and we moved frequently, every few years. Soon after I finished Grade 10 in 1966, we made a big move: from Chittagong to Rawalpindi.
20 March 2020, 18:00 PM
Short-Lived
Unloved and unnoticed
13 March 2020, 18:00 PM
Original vs Derivative: Reading Syed Shamsul Haque’s Ballad of Our Hero Bangabandhu in Translation
To aptly celebrate the Birth-Centenary of the Father of the Nation Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, one initiative, among others, by Bangla Academy has been to publish Syed Shamsul Haque’s Ballad of our Hero Bangabandhu, together with its translation in English, as part of its grand project named “Birth-Centenary Publications of the Father of the Nation Bangabadhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman.
13 March 2020, 18:00 PM
Charlotte Brontë’s Villette: Food for Thought
Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre is widely read as a classic feminist novel. Published in 1953, Villette, however, still resides in a shadowy region.
13 March 2020, 18:00 PM
Bangabandhu, the 1947 Partition and Healing its Wounds
In the intellectual evolution of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the partition of the subcontinent in 1947 played a decisive role.
13 March 2020, 18:00 PM
Late Night Love Note to Self
Things are dark and bleak?
6 March 2020, 18:00 PM
Separation: A Soliloquy
Doesn’t anyone get that my soul cringes for a call?
6 March 2020, 18:00 PM
The Phone Call
Aum impatiently held on to his phone, hearing it ring without being answered. He hated having to start the day without hearing her voice. Then again, he also hated going to bed without talking to her. It was going to be a bad day.
6 March 2020, 18:00 PM
Two Poems
Psychedelic noises – a cacophony so harmonious
6 March 2020, 18:00 PM
NEW BOOK
Rashida Sultana’s much-admired novel, Shada Beralera has been translated into English as The White Cats, recently.
6 March 2020, 18:00 PM
Language Attitude Anxiety and Remedial Propositions: A New Approach to ELT
Asantha U Attanayake’s first exchanges with me were over e-mail. She was travelling across the Subcontinent to collect and develop materials for her forthcoming book.
6 March 2020, 18:00 PM
What Makes Good Writing Good?
To answer this question, let me hazard an analogy -- good writing is much like good food. Good writing tickles our senses the way good food does.
28 February 2020, 18:00 PM
Sweet Dreams and Distressing Nightmares
Those haunting lyrics of the British band Eurythmics, “Sweet dreams are made of this…”, followed intermittently by “…everybody is looking for something…”, and “…some of them want to use you…” fairly accurately encapsulate the theme of the dozen short stories that make up Rummana Chowdhury’s slim volume,
28 February 2020, 18:00 PM
RUN
The ruby red kite fluttered above head, contrasted against the aquamarine sky, and it all was picture perfect for a split second, so perfect that it was a spoiler to the fact that something horrible was about to follow, like it did almost always.
28 February 2020, 18:00 PM
History Animated through Words
No matter Lawrence Durrel defines history as “an endless repetition of the wrong way of living,” we must study it closely for gaining insights into our very own existence and setting our future course of actions.
28 February 2020, 18:00 PM
NEW from The Daily Star Books
The book comprises a curated collection of essays written by Professor Fakrul Alam on various occasions for The Daily Star, starting from 1999 until now.
21 February 2020, 18:00 PM
New Books: Ekushey Boi Mela, 2020
The poems in this collection explore issues plaguing the world right now—poverty, class inequality, climate crisis, warfare and
21 February 2020, 18:00 PM
An Afternoon on Syed Manzoorul Islam’s Absurd Night
An interesting event of launching the revised translation of Syed Manzoorul Islam’s novel Ajgubi Raat took place on Saturday, February
21 February 2020, 18:00 PM