Reviews
BOOK REVIEW: NONFICTION / Sports journalism and Bangladesh
Textbooks in Bangladesh tend to be written by foreign authors. Those that are written by Bangladeshi authors, emphasise on examples in a non-Bangladesh context.
'Independence': A painfully poignant Partition story
Divakaruni has a message to send with this novel. To her, independence entails not just liberation or freedom from subjugation, it also means doing the right thing for oneself and for the people around us.
Professing criticism: On Naeem Mohaiemen's new book of essays
Although the book is written in English, he has plenty of doubt to dispense about the language, its usefulness, acceptance, and communicability when it comes to writing and creating art in Bangladesh.
Flesh in ruins
It is the disease that maintains the upper hand in the plot. A jarring voice of its own, the toxins spilling across the pages in bold, chaotic words.
BOOK REVIEW: FICTION / Family of feelings: Iffat Nawaz's 'Shurjo's Clan'
Part memoir, part magical realism, this is a story about identity and the idea of home.
BOOK REVIEW: FICTION / The Bhawal story through women’s voices in Aruna Chakravarti’s ‘The Mendicant Prince’
The story of the ailing Bhawal prince, Ramendranarayan Roy, the Mejo Kumar, who while taken to Darjeeling to recuperate, died and was cremated there, under mysterious circumstances, and who then returned years later as a wandering ascetic with partial amnesia!
BOOK REVIEW: NONFICTION / Andy Warhol & Truman Capote talk out their anxieties
Andy Warhol suggested they tape their conversations on his Sony Walkman, to which Truman Capote agrees.
BOOK REVIEW: NONFICTION / Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose: A relative’s perspective on an enigmatic hero
Nehru was revolted by Nazism and the persecution of Europe’s Jews. Bose…felt that the Indian struggle for freedom should override all other considerations.
Where folktales meet social commentary
I stumbled across a short story written by Aoko Matsuda called “Quite a Catch” in the Wasafiri literary magazine last month.
The (D)Evolution of the Paranoid Android
To write of Radiohead’s 2000 album Kid A is to add to the palimpsest of its criticism, at this stage a glowing, impossibly effusive set of texts.
Razia Khan: Life and Literature Archived
For anyone looking to immerse themself in the literary culture of Bangladesh, Professor Razia Khan Amin’s name and presence are unavoidable.
YA Books to Read on Valentine’s Day
Be it the classical enemies-to-lovers trope, the fake dating trope or the infamous, and endlessly intoxicating, love triangle, the stories below have covered it all.
The Reading Café opens a new branch in Banani
Popular manga, biographies, children’s books, and latest international releases across genres are expected to become available at the store within two weeks of publication.
How 1952 paved the way for 1971
In this second installment, we talk about Purbo Banglar Bhasha Andolon O Totkaleen Rajneeti (The Language Movement of Bengal and Contemporary Politics), in which author and historian Badruddin Umar explains the cultural, economic, and historical context behind the Bangla language movement of 1952.
For the love of books
Similar to the mimicry of life by art, sometimes a book in our hands can acutely imitate the arcs of the love story we are in, ourselves—like the time a ghost lover stole a paperback Frankenstein from the neighborhood café as a last minute birthday gift for me, while our alliance reeked of haunted loneliness and painful assertions, or when one of my friends, a doctor by day and an avid reader by night, spoke about his first encounter with Harry Potter and the “cute, sweet girl across the hall.”
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.