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.
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.
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.
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.
Netflix’s ‘The White Tiger’: A Lukewarm Translation of Rage On-screen
One can’t help but be excited about Netflix’s recent attempts at bringing to life and screen valuable works of South Asian fiction. Today’s focus, The White Tiger, which premiered on Netflix on January 21, 2021, was a debut novel by the Indian-Australian writer and journalist Aravind Adiga, who won critical acclaim and the Man Booker Prize in 2008 for his critique of class and caste boundaries in India.
On Gender Mainstreaming and Governance in South Asia
Despite much of the conversations and advances across countries since the Beijing Platform for Action (1995), gender mainstreaming still lacks a solid theoretical grounding, primarily because it grew outside academia as a movement under the ambit of feminism, and not as a part of social science.
‘A Gift for a Ghost’: Spain’s Great New Graphic Novel
Borja González is a self-taught illustrator, and you both can and cannot tell while looking at his resplendent new work, A Gift for a Ghost (Abram ComicArts, 2020).