Mahmuda Emdad

The Booker 2025 longlist announced: A global showcase of the power of fiction

The 2025 Booker Prize longlist was revealed on Tuesday, July 29, showcasing a diverse ensemble of literary brilliance, with novels that spanned continents, genres, and narrative styles

3d ago

Tracing an uprising in strokes

Graffiti has long played a powerful role in revolutions around the world. From the walls of Paris in 1968 to the slogans of the Arab Spring, street art has served as one of the most immediate and accessible forms of resistance.

4d ago

Painted in friendship, framed by grief

“Art is empathy,” Fredrik Backman writes. So is friendship—the kind that stays with you long after the summer ends.The kind you find when you’re 14 and everything is breaking and beginning at once. The kind of friendship that becomes a map back to yourself, years later, when you’re lost in grief, guilt, or even just the quiet ache of growing up. Fredrik Backman’s My Friends is a love letter to those friendships.

2w ago

Baatighar turns 21: Celebration today at their Dhaka branch

To commemorate the milestone, Baatighar will host a series of events throughout the year across all four divisional branches.Ba

3w ago

To flee, to remember

Every year, on June 20, World Refugee Day calls on us to remember and hold in our hearts the millions displaced by conflict, persecution, and political upheaval around the world.

1m ago

Of women, rage, and what burns unseen

These stories subtly highlight how even within patriarchal structures, men, too, are shaped, sometimes twisted by the systems they benefit from.

2m ago

Feluda, the idea of ‘Bangali Bhadralok’, and the gendered silence in detective fiction

These decisions hint at an implicit belief that certain genres or readerships require the exclusion of certain genders, whether due to artistic limitations, market considerations, or adherence to established genre conventions.

2m ago

Reading Begum Rokeya, again and always

Begum Rokeya was once described as a “Spider Mother” (makar-mata or makarsha janani) in her biographical account but there is nothing sinister in this metaphor. The image of the spider here symbolises the quiet, patient, and selfless labour of an educator, caring for children who were not her own. Shamsunnahar Mahmud, her close co-worker, wrote: “Day after day in this way, with the blood of her own breast, Spider Mother began to revive hundreds of baby spiders into new life.”

3m ago
July 31, 2025
July 31, 2025

The Booker 2025 longlist announced: A global showcase of the power of fiction

The 2025 Booker Prize longlist was revealed on Tuesday, July 29, showcasing a diverse ensemble of literary brilliance, with novels that spanned continents, genres, and narrative styles

July 31, 2025
July 31, 2025

Tracing an uprising in strokes

Graffiti has long played a powerful role in revolutions around the world. From the walls of Paris in 1968 to the slogans of the Arab Spring, street art has served as one of the most immediate and accessible forms of resistance.

July 17, 2025
July 17, 2025

Painted in friendship, framed by grief

“Art is empathy,” Fredrik Backman writes. So is friendship—the kind that stays with you long after the summer ends.The kind you find when you’re 14 and everything is breaking and beginning at once. The kind of friendship that becomes a map back to yourself, years later, when you’re lost in grief, guilt, or even just the quiet ache of growing up. Fredrik Backman’s My Friends is a love letter to those friendships.

July 8, 2025
July 8, 2025

Baatighar turns 21: Celebration today at their Dhaka branch

To commemorate the milestone, Baatighar will host a series of events throughout the year across all four divisional branches.Ba

June 20, 2025
June 20, 2025

To flee, to remember

Every year, on June 20, World Refugee Day calls on us to remember and hold in our hearts the millions displaced by conflict, persecution, and political upheaval around the world.

May 29, 2025
May 29, 2025

Of women, rage, and what burns unseen

These stories subtly highlight how even within patriarchal structures, men, too, are shaped, sometimes twisted by the systems they benefit from.

May 9, 2025
May 9, 2025

Feluda, the idea of ‘Bangali Bhadralok’, and the gendered silence in detective fiction

These decisions hint at an implicit belief that certain genres or readerships require the exclusion of certain genders, whether due to artistic limitations, market considerations, or adherence to established genre conventions.

April 24, 2025
April 24, 2025

Reading Begum Rokeya, again and always

Begum Rokeya was once described as a “Spider Mother” (makar-mata or makarsha janani) in her biographical account but there is nothing sinister in this metaphor. The image of the spider here symbolises the quiet, patient, and selfless labour of an educator, caring for children who were not her own. Shamsunnahar Mahmud, her close co-worker, wrote: “Day after day in this way, with the blood of her own breast, Spider Mother began to revive hundreds of baby spiders into new life.”

April 5, 2025
April 5, 2025

6 literary characters we wish could join our Eid table

What if our Eid table had a few extra chairs reserved not for guests from our world but from that of the books we’ve loved throughout our life?

March 22, 2025
March 22, 2025

The power of Qasidas and devotional poetry in deepening Ramadan reflections

While core acts of devotion take center stage, qasidas (Islamic odes) and devotional poetry serve as powerful complements, enriching the experience of Ramadan and deepening one’s spiritual reflections