Shahriar Shaams

Shahriar Shaams has written for SUSPECT, Third Lane Mag (forthcoming), Commonwealth Writers’ Adda, Six Seasons Review, and Jamini. Find him on twitter @shahriarshaams.

‘Huckleberry Finn’ through the eyes of Jim

Everett’s breezy, fast-moving retelling of Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884) is about putting in some due respect.

1m ago

Residence

I plead but I know there is nothing I can do. Akbar, in a rare fit of courage, tries to intervene. But the old man does not budge. Maybe he knows about Mina and me.

2m ago

Sometime ago, a writer reached out to me with a request. His debut novel was being published later in the year and he was wondering if I would be open to reviewing it. I was aware of the book, having read it when it was still only a draft. The author was not someone I only knew, either, but a mentor who had supported my writing in many ways, even through monetary means. Refusing him, then, felt tantamount to betrayal. But I had to in the end, and though he understood, I still came out of the exchange feeling guilty of being unhelpful or, worse, ungrateful.

3m ago

A “knockout” debut from Rita Bullwinkel

The eight girls in Headshot clearly hope to escape the chaos of their lives in the ring.

3m ago

Whom is the propaganda on X for?

The disinformation game is now increasingly a part of our political makeup.

3m ago

Rabindranath’s rebellion

“The liberation that comes through sorrow is greater than the sorrow,” says Nikhilesh, in Home and the World. I quote from Penguin’s Modern Classics edition, in Sreejata Guha’s translation.

3m ago

We must never let such an environment of fear reign again

Fear cannot ever lead to forgetting.

3m ago

When death is a performance

Kaveh Akbar’s Martyr! is unruly and endearing. Akbar’s years as a poet has given his debut novel an honesty that shines through the book’s arduous structure. And for all of Martyr!’s exhilarating tone and emotional trek, the difficulties of writing a novel on addiction, martyrdom, death, and meaning is evident when one reads it.

4m ago

May 18, 2024

Hair cream

The mosque committee was quite displeased with Rashed, their young muezzin.

May 4, 2024

Human passions in Kurosawa’s Shakespeare

Shakespeare’s enduring international appeal is in part due to the remarkable personalities he had invented.

April 20, 2024

The Precious O

That split second when the rubber slaps your skin and stays, when there is a click of a switch, a levitation, a lightness of your body—everyone remembers the first time they are knocked out, everyone except Mr Suleyman Khar, regional light-heavyweight titleist,

March 28, 2024

Meditations on sanity in ‘Hospital’

Though on its surface Sanya Rushdi’s Hospital, translated into English by Arunava Sinha and recently longlisted for the 2024 Stella Prize, looks to be a breezy, short read—it is anything but. With her rather flattened, sparse prose, Rushdi has managed to write an enduring piece of autofiction, a compelling account of psychosis that neither sensationalises nor withers away any sentimentality from the struggles of mental health.

February 15, 2024

The enchanting realism in Shahaduz Zaman’s ‘The Mynah Bird’s Testimony’

Shahaduz Zaman is a familiar face in Bangladeshi literature, whose literary career spans decades of fruitful work. He regularly writes columns for Bangla newspapers, has written a few notable biographical fiction, such as Ekjon Komolalebu (Prothoma, 2017), based around the life of Jibanananda Das, and has garnered some duly needed appreciation for ethnographic work on the history of medicine during the liberation war.

January 4, 2024