Bot Book Reviews

Bot Book Reviews

ESSAY / Between tradition and taboo: The arranged marriage trope in Bangla dark romance literature

Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only and does not endorse or condone any form of abuse or exploitation.

4m ago

EVENT REPORT / Celebrating diversity and language at “Bhasha Utshob 2025”

Gulshan Society held a two-day language festival at the Gulshan Lake Park, curated by Sadaf Saaz and Jatrik. The event took place over the weekend of 21-22 February that saw discussion panels, original musical performances, and poetry recitations, surrounded by an array of book stalls and food courts.

4m ago

BOOK REVIEW: FICTION / Rediscovering Reading: How ‘Fragments of Riversong’ helped me heal

Harvard killed my love for reading. When my advisor took me out for a celebratory dinner an hour after my doctoral defense in July 2012, I struggled to read the menu.

5m ago

BOOK REVIEW: FICTION / Murakami and the limits of an artist’s imagination

Haruki Murakami’s The City and Its Uncertain Walls, its English translation published last November, plunges the reader into a kind of metaphysical vertigo that never reaches a concluding synthesis.

5m ago

BOOK REVIEW: FICTION / Shards of clarity

Beginning to read Fine Gråbøl’s What Kingdom, translated from the Danish by Martin Aitkin, is like sitting in a silent room, alone, and a voice begins to speak as though from beside you.

5m ago

BOOK REVIEW: FICTION / Accounts of a joyless life

Izumi Suzuki was little known outside of Japan during her short lifetime. The Japanese author and actress had remained a cult figure most of her life.

5m ago

BOOK REVIEW: FICTION / Through folklore and fantasy: An ode to Bangla mythological characters

The book invites you to revel in the world of legends, to dream as you once did as a child.

6m ago

EVENT REPORT / ‘Catfish and Avatars’: Discussions on cyber lives and cyber safety

The phrases “cyber safety” and “cyber lives” may seem vague and not very well understood among Bangladesh’s netizens.

6m ago

A hope grows in “Borderland”

I discovered Olga Tokarczuk in 2018 after having lapped up the contents of Flights (Fitzcarraldo Editions, 2017), a novel, written in fragments, that invites obsessive reading, winning Tokarczuk and her brilliant translator Jennifer Croft no less than the Man Booker International prize that same year.

4y ago

The writers of ‘Golden: Bangladesh at 50’ tell their tales

In Golden: Bangladesh at 50 (University Press Ltd, 2021) edited by Shazia Omar, 23 of Bangladesh’s eminent writers and poets—including Kaiser Haq, Arif Anwar, Shabnam Nadiya, Farah Ghuznavi, and others—find home for their varied expressions of Bangladeshi life, culture, history, love, hate, as well as the lulls that defined our quarantined existence this past year.

4y ago

'Desi Delicacies': Tracing South Asian Muslim civilisation through food

Desi Delicacies: Food Writing from Muslim South Asia (Pan Macmillan India, 2020) is a delightful anthology edited by Claire Chambers—no stranger to the lifestyle of Muslims.

4y ago

The allure of a book

It happened on a slow morning during my university English literature class. We had just finished reading one of Roald Dahl’s lesser-known short stories, “Skin”, published in The New Yorker in 1952. The lecturer called upon the class to present their analyses of the short story. When it was my turn to speak, I became tongue-tied as my mind slowly went blank. It had been close to four years since I had picked up a book.

4y ago

The essence of Pohela Baishakh in Bangla literature

All things colourful make up the Bangla New Year—boisterous celebrations of nature, art work, music, food, the quintessential Bangali warmth, and the Mongol Shobhajatra as its crowning jewel

4y ago

Boi Mela 2021: Huge blows dealt to the publishing industry

Very few visitors were seen on the last day of the Boi Mela yesterday, it being a working day.

4y ago

Shahosro Shumon’s new book on the relativity of success

Poet and novelist, Shahosro Shumon, who has recently met with great acclaim following his poem, “E jatray beche gele”, has published a new book on the relativity of success and how modern society has come to measure it in monetary terms.

4y ago

An untold story of Black liberation in the Amazon

The New World, as started by Spanish and Portuguese authorities followed by the Dutch and the English, was built on the amputated bodies of countless indigenous and Black people.

4y ago

‘Anubhutir Abhidhan’: A peek into the world of Tahsan Khan

As a lover of books and music, it is no surprise that I would pick up Anubhutir Abhidhan (Addhayan Prokashoni, 2021), a book of musings, stories, and poems written by Tahsan Khan— singer, songwriter, actor, teacher, and also a mentor to many in Bangladesh.

4y ago

Demystifying the COVID-19 pandemic

One year ago, I was tracking cases of a novel coronavirus as it was spreading all across the world. One year into the pandemic, COVID-19 needs no introduction.

4y ago