Book Reviews

Revisiting forgotten babyhood days with ‘Babuibela’

Every emotion associated with pregnancy and childbirth is amplified...
New online journal ‘Kitchen Sink’ promises an accessible platform for poets

About a month ago, a few friends sent me invites to follow the...
The book that I would like to read

Today I would like to talk about a book that I have been waiting to...

Tahmima Anam’s ‘The Startup Wife’ arrives at Baatighar

Tahmima Anam’s fourth and latest novel, The Startup Wife (Penguin...
Is Netflix’s ‘Ray’ worth the watch?

Netflix’s latest anthology series, Ray, is based on four short...
Who is Ayad Akhtar?

When I began reading Homeland Elegies (Little, Brown and Company,...

Colm Tóibín takes Henry James for a ride

In a detour from all the genres and topics that we review on this...
Ann Patchett’s ‘The Dutch House’: On branches of memories and pain

Even though we moved out of our grandmother’s house in Dhaka more...
A tribute to my father and his bookshelf

Last week, we marked the 10th year of my father’s death, on June...

Unpacking Bangladesh’s obsession with Bollywood

Mrittika Anan Rahman (MAR): What does it say about Bollywood that...
Feminism, activism, and literature: The legacy of Sufia Kamal

Sufia Kamal’s is a name revered in nearly every household in the...
Sensing Bangladesh through art and poetry

In their latest offering, Sensing Bangladesh – A Children’s...

‘The Moment of Lift’: Melinda Gates and the developing world’s untapped female-fuel

Female empowerment is often seen as a luxury reserved for...
Books to read if you miss travelling this summer

I know it’s hard when you want to travel, but life, owing in no...
Of the peasants’ quest for a state and Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman

Afsan Chowdhury’s Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and Bangladesh: The Quest...

For lovers of traveling and history

Shamsul Alam’s From Love Lane to the World: Tales of Travel &...
IFIC Kali O Kolom Young Writers Award 2020 winners announced

Sponsored by IFIC Bank, this year’s Kali O Kolom Torun Kabi O...
Soumitra Chatterjee: The one man behind the many

It is impossible to ascribe any one particular character to...

Forgiveness, growth, and second chances in Sarah Hogle’s ‘Twice Shy’

Reading Sarah Hogle’s Twice Shy (GP Putnam’s Sons, 2021) is like...
My learning from Anne Frank as she turns 92

Not all books fulfil the purpose of exploring metaphors or offering...
Tahmima Anam launches and discusses ‘The Startup Wife’ at Hay Festival

On June 3, 2021, Bangladeshi-born British writer Tahmima Anam...

A truly ‘Invincible’ comic book series

While DC and Marvel, the two big dogs of the comic book industry,...
Relationships lost and found in debut novel ‘Punyaha’.

In the middle of nowhere, among the wide expanse of paddy fields...
A handbook for navigating the social media age in your profession

While the world might seem like a place only made for extroverts,...

The Glamour and Darkness of the Spanish Dictatorship

Ruta Sepetys’s The Fountains of Silence (Penguin Books, 2019) takes place in the 1950s, in a Spain reigned by fear and stifling laws, caught between the dichotomy of non-existent human rights on the one side, and a flourishing tourist scene and wealthy visitors wooed by the national regime on the other.
The Code Name for a Bloodstained Era

Vincent Bevins is an award-winning journalist who covered Southeast Asia and Brazil for the Washington Post and Los Angeles Times respectively.
Book Road Khulna: Locals donate books for a street-side book fair

The event provided the bookworms of Khulna with a unique opportunity to share their books with the community.
South Asian pasts in books

Film director and activist Alamgir Kabir aired the first of his Shwadhin Bangla Betar Kendro dispatches on the Bangladesh Liberation War on June 15, 1971.
Book sales and review competitions mark the beginning of February 2021

In any other year, the beginning of February would normally be marked by the month-long Amar Ekushey Boi Mela which unfolds across the Bangla Academy and Suhrawardy Udyan grounds.
“Boi Mela-centric love for books poses obstacles for the publishing industry.”

Minar Mansur, the current director of the National Book Centre (Jatiya Grantha Kendro), was born on July 20, 1960 in the Barlia village of Chittagong.
History, lost love, and the road not taken in Jodi Picoult’s latest novel

Jodi Picoult’s The Book of Two Ways (Ballantine Books, 2020) discusses with great candour the complexities of human choices, of love, regret, death, and other tumultuous complications that make up life.
JK Rowling’s Disappointing Cry for Relevance

There are two kinds of children’s stories: those which you dust off as an adult and find yourself discovering new depths to upon revisiting, and those that you flick through and donate.
A History of the Ulama in British India

Over the past few years, and particularly after their recent tussle with the government over the statue of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the Ulama’s involvement in politics has come back under scrutiny in Bangladesh.
Testimony to the Cruel Birth of Bangladesh

Half a century from where we began, throughout this 50th year of Bangladesh, Daily Star Books will revisit and analyse some of the books that played pivotal roles in documenting the Liberation War and the birth of this nation in 1971. The last issue of every month will feature an elaborate article on these books.