Fakrul Alam

Fakrul Alam is a Bangladeshi academic, writer, and translator.

A peripatetic poet’s pleasing musings

The title of this book suggests that it is based in Bengal but it really meanders deftly across time and space, more often than not in “mazy motion”.

2w ago

Be a tree

Be a tree Get wet in sorrow’s shower and you’ll recover. From envy’s scorching sun gather strength

Rehman Sobhan’s recollections of the road he took towards December 16, 1971

The title of the first of Professor Rehman Sobhan’s two-part memoir suggests that it is about his “years of fulfilment”; the subject matter of its sequel therefore would be about the “untranquil” years that followed.

18th century British women writers and their Indian others

The postcolonial and feminist lenses Chatterjee deploys in his discussion of the works of the selected women writers seem to suit his analysis of the works of these "enlightenment" period British women writers, for their biases, fixations, and anxieties often come into view then.

Diasporic delusions

Self-confidence shaken, some shattered memories in their side bags

Shokoruno Benu Bajaie Ke Jai

Who is the one playing such a plaintive tune on a flute

Remembering Melville in his bicentenary year

Melville's critics, inevitably, panned him for what he had characterised self-deprecatingly and in his frustration as his fictional "botches," although his works were rarely that.

Rabindranath Tagore’s ‘Gora’: From notions of purity to an all-embracing Bharatborsho

Rabindranath Tagore’s Gora, written between 1907 and 1909, reveals the ways in which Tagore addresses the all-important issues of his time—national identity formation, the coming together of people over time, and obstacles or barriers put in the way of the progress of a nation. The novel captures Tagore’s fascination with envisioning a future based on human amity or moitri, one where the powerless and the dispossessed transcend the barriers of division and distrust.

April 4, 2024
April 4, 2024

A peripatetic poet’s pleasing musings

The title of this book suggests that it is based in Bengal but it really meanders deftly across time and space, more often than not in “mazy motion”.

March 16, 2024
March 16, 2024

Be a tree

Be a tree Get wet in sorrow’s shower and you’ll recover. From envy’s scorching sun gather strength

February 8, 2024
February 8, 2024

Rehman Sobhan’s recollections of the road he took towards December 16, 1971

The title of the first of Professor Rehman Sobhan’s two-part memoir suggests that it is about his “years of fulfilment”; the subject matter of its sequel therefore would be about the “untranquil” years that followed.

January 11, 2024
January 11, 2024

18th century British women writers and their Indian others

The postcolonial and feminist lenses Chatterjee deploys in his discussion of the works of the selected women writers seem to suit his analysis of the works of these "enlightenment" period British women writers, for their biases, fixations, and anxieties often come into view then.

November 25, 2023
November 25, 2023

Diasporic delusions

Self-confidence shaken, some shattered memories in their side bags

October 7, 2023
October 7, 2023

Shokoruno Benu Bajaie Ke Jai

Who is the one playing such a plaintive tune on a flute

August 29, 2023
August 29, 2023

Remembering Melville in his bicentenary year

Melville's critics, inevitably, panned him for what he had characterised self-deprecatingly and in his frustration as his fictional "botches," although his works were rarely that.

August 5, 2023
August 5, 2023

Rabindranath Tagore’s ‘Gora’: From notions of purity to an all-embracing Bharatborsho

Rabindranath Tagore’s Gora, written between 1907 and 1909, reveals the ways in which Tagore addresses the all-important issues of his time—national identity formation, the coming together of people over time, and obstacles or barriers put in the way of the progress of a nation. The novel captures Tagore’s fascination with envisioning a future based on human amity or moitri, one where the powerless and the dispossessed transcend the barriers of division and distrust.

March 25, 2023
March 25, 2023

War and peace and poetry and poets

How can you talk about peace without taking into account war? Both are subjects not only of Tolstoy’s great novel but also of the two founding epic poems of Greek as well as Indian literature.

October 22, 2022
October 22, 2022

In Memory of Jibanananda Das

By 1954 Jibanananda Das, after years of neglect, was beginning to gain increasing attention as a poet all over Bengal—East or West—and had a steady teaching job after a long, long time. Indeed, in 1953 he had been awarded the Rabindra-Smriti Puroshkar for his book of verse, Banalata Sen. In May, 1954 his Jibanananda Dasher Shreshto Kobita came out from a reasonably good publishing house, collecting his best poems.

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