Can our walls make space for our dissent?
The walls of Dhaka city represent the volume and chaos of thousands of people jostling for ever-shrinking space.
3m ago
4 books I was grateful to read this year
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
3m ago
Outliers take centre-stage in Shah Tazrian Ashrafi’s debut collection
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.
4m ago
Rifat Munim on Bangladeshi fiction: ‘This is a diverse terrain you are going to tread on’
In the foreword, I wanted to capture how I, as a child, grew up listening to different stories: ghost stories, mythical stories from both Sanatana and Islamic religious scriptures, and fairy tales from 'Thakurmar Jhuli', compiled by Dakkhinaranjan Mitra Majumdar. It was a time when there were no boundaries for my imagination.
9m ago
The first semester is your shitty first draft
Like many veterans, I joined a creative writing MFA program because I wanted to evolve as a writer.
10m ago
A glimpse of the Istanbul we don’t know
Here was a woman who was but a dot amidst the throngs of people who watched the Bosphorus Bridge being opened in October 1973, as fireworks erupted over a Turkey that now seamed Asia to Europe.
1y ago
In conversation with South Asia’s preeminent literary agent, Kanishka Gupta
I always tell the authors to make subjective, qualitative decisions. So many of my authors say no to higher offers from publishing houses if they don’t feel comfortable with the publisher or editor.
1y ago
A bookstore is a time machine—Zeenat Book Supply through the ages
Last week, one of Dhaka’s oldest bookstores announced that they will be closing shop after running for 60 years
1y ago
December 23, 2021
Diversity and nuance mark the Bangladeshi experience in Sohana Manzoor's 'Our Many Longings: Contemporary Short Fiction From Bangladesh'
So many words have been used to describe this nation in the last 50 years. Started from a bottomless basket, and along the way we’ve been called resilient, passionate, corrupt, greedy, full of warmth.
October 28, 2021
In "Taxi Wallah", Numair Atif Chowdhury takes us, once more, through the cartography of a homeland
The version of Bangladesh we received in Babu Bangladesh (2019) was astonishing.
October 7, 2021
Anuk Arudpragasam's 'A Passage North': Requiem for the textures of time, violent and tender
Sand, water, memory—the grainy, elusive grace they share pervades the experiences making up Sri Lankan author Anuk Arudpragasam’s second novel, A Passage North (Hamish Hamilton, 2021), shortlisted for this year’s Booker Prize.
September 30, 2021
What They Don’t Tell You About the Statement of Purpose
The SOP, in a way, is a conversation with the admissions committee.
September 9, 2021
The allure of the campus novel
In Susannah Clarke’s Piranesi, whose review rests atop this article, the narrator labels time not by calendar dates but by the things that happen to him—the birds who visit his wing of the world, the tides that come swinging or gently.
August 19, 2021
In Suchitra Vijayan’s new book, borders are as arbitrary as history
In Midnight's Borders (Westland Publications, 2021), author and photographer Suchitra Vijayan travels the 9,000 miles of India's borders to understand what Partition did to individual lives and communities, and how it continues to incite violence, displacement, prejudice, and trauma among those who live in the border regions.
August 18, 2021
There is poetry in solitude: Things I learned from Farhan and Zoya Akhtar’s holiday films
It wasn’t until 2001 that a Bollywood film would unpack for me how friendship truly works—friendship that goes beyond the melodrama of a Sholay or a Kuch Kuch Hota Hain, that navigates the trickier terrains of conflict, miscommunication, and the clashing of irrational egos in everyday life. Farhan Akhtar’s Dil Chahta Hai (2001) turned 20 this year, but it remains a cult classic not only because it revolutionised storytelling in the Indian film industry of its time, earning a place in university syllabi on filmmaking, but also because it introduced a genre and way of thinking that was missing from Bollywood films until then.
August 5, 2021
'Golden: Bangladesh at 50' - A tender, discerning look at where we are now
Fifty years old this year, the country represented in 'Golden: Bangladesh at 50' (UPL, 2021) is haunted, still, by all that it has survived, and it takes a look at all that it continues to breed, ranging from the festering to the hopeful. And so it follows that the collection feels wonderfully young, even as it comprises some of the most experienced and eminent of our writers, from Neeman Sobhan and Lubna Marium to Arif Anwar, Shazia Omar, Nadeem Zaman, Sabrina Ahmad, and many more.
July 24, 2021
Is the book really better than the adaptation?
I think it started, at least for us kids of the ’90s, with the Harry Potter franchise.
July 23, 2021
‘There’s something very old school and romantic about books. They are such a special part of my life.’ - Kishwar Chowdhury
At every step of her journey in the MasterChef kitchen—from her fried sardines with beetroot and blood orange to a date-nestled, ice cream infused paan and panta bhaat with aloo bhorta—Kishwar Chowdhury has talked about writing a cookbook for Bangladeshi recipes as her ultimate dream. In this episode of Star Book Talk, Daily Star Books editor Sarah Anjum Bari talks about food, books, and cookbooks with Kishwar Chowdhury.
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