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.
In ‘Toward Happy Civilization’, a portrait of desperation
Typical of any Samanta Schweblin story from her International Booker-longlisted collection, Mouthful of Birds (OneWorld, 2019), a sense of anxiety is strongly perceptible here, especially through the characters Fi and Pe. One grows afraid of them as they start showing both lovingly caring and Big Brother-like tendencies. What heightens the ominous halo surrounding these two is the hostages’ inability to translate their emotions; why would someone who provides for you not give you a way out?
Around the world with Tilmund and the travel bug
Samai Haider’s Tilmund’s Travel Tales (Guba Books, 2020) is a story about a little boy named Tilmund who has a great wish to follow in his grandfather’s footsteps and travel the world.
The legacy of blood
Henry Kissinger is infamous in Bangladesh for allegedly terming the newly-independent country a “bottomless basket”, but this statement appears to be the least of his crimes against the people of Bangladesh.
The universality of solitude and good books in Jhumpa Lahiri's 'Whereabouts'
Whereabouts (Penguin India, 2021) is Jhumpa Lahiri’s third novel, published originally as Dove mi trovo (2018) in Italian and translated to English by the author herself, as she did with her work of nonfiction, In Other Words (2015).
Taran Khan maps Kabul through memory in 'Shadow City'
In Shadow City: A Woman Walks Kabul (Vintage Books, 2019), Khan delineates a personal map of Kabul, taking the reader through the “shadow city” that can be found in its still-standing monuments, libraries, pleasure gardens, theatres, shopping malls, wedding halls and graveyards.
‘Rabindranath Gave It a Miss’... for good reason
Mohammad Nazim Uddin’s fictional offering ultimately hovers somewhere between pulp fiction and feminist commentary, but it fails to satisfy readers on either count.
Won-Pyung Sohn’s ‘Almond’: A story of loveable monsters
Won-Pyung Sohn’s Almond (HarperVia, 2021), translated to English by Sandy Josun Lee, is a mesmerizing novel that captures the heart of a reader indelibly. Fifteen-year-old Yunjae cannot feel emotions due to alexithymia and is deemed a monster by others. Feelings such as love and empathy are mere words to him. At the age of six he sees a child gang-beaten to death by other children. More than a decade later, he watches a man stab his grandmother and hammer his mother into a comatose state, without batting an eyelid. At school he is tormented and at home, he becomes aware of an ever-growing void due to the absence of a loving family, but nothing can penetrate his heart. His lonely days pass in nonchalance until one day an unusual request from a stranger ends up connecting him with another...
Why I still love Roald Dahl’s ‘Matilda’ today
Over the years, Dahl’s work in children’s literature has amassed quite the legacy in pop culture, with actor-director Danny DeVito’s silver screen adaptation of Matilda only adding to the novel’s popularity. Looking at the anniversary today, I can’t help but wonder if the magical children’s icon from the late ‘80s can continue to exert the same amount of influence over young minds. Fourth-grade Rasha would have gleefully said ‘Yes’ in a heartbeat, but as a young adult, I believe there is some reflecting to be done.
The Birangona in fiction: ‘1971’ and ‘Talaash’
In this addition to this series, following up on the previous installment’s focus on nonfiction narratives of Birangonas’s lives and experiences, we recall Tarashankar Bandopadhyay’s '1971' (2015) and Shaheen Akhtar’s 'Talaash' (2004), two books that can be considered as significant exceptions to the trend mentioned above, and also as examples of the politics of representation, objectification of women, and the desensitisation of lived experiences of trauma.
Re-reading ‘The Alchemist’: A book of omens
Before I knew it, I developed a personal relationship with the book. I was glued from beginning till end. I read slowly. Sometimes I read the same section twice. I could not focus on anything else till I finished. The experience was psychedelic: an expansion of the mind (imagination). In the end, the second omen worked. I was out of depression. Ricardo was right: “a good book (or film) can pull you out of depression”.