EVENT REPORT / Bon Bibi reimagined: A feminist tale from the Sundarbans

This was a syncretic tale of the Sundarbans that was reinterpreted into being at Goethe-Institut Bangladesh on Saturday, June 28, by Folklore Expedition Bangladesh in a puthi path titled “Bon Bibir Jahuranama”

BOOK REVIEW: POETRY / Shards of beauty: Poems of a lifetime

Shahid Alam and I go back a long way, though we had both half-forgotten it until recently. He was two years senior to me at St. Gregory’s High School.

BOOK REVIEW: ANTHOLOGY / Acknowledging the lesser-known

Aptly named Ateet Theke Adhuna: Bangladesher Naari Lekhok, this collection is unlike a conventional anthology. Starting with Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain, the list of writers includes an impressive 66 great authors.

Under the olive tree

Then you will vanish—becoming Amma, Chachi, Mami. No one will remember your name.

Dhaka in slow motion

The city still wants to breathe.

Who is feminist literature for?

For today’s feminists, the focus isn’t just on challenging or breaking social norms, but also on asking, who gets to break these norms? And to what extent?

Reading Baitullah Quaderee: A critic’s view of a poetic decade

When I picked up Baitullah Quaderee’s 'Bangladesher Shater Dashaker Kabita', it wasn’t particularly out of scholarly curiosity. The book is, by design, a doctoral thesis—its structure conventional, its chapters arranged by academic demand—but what caught my interest was not the format, nor even the topic. It was the author himself. 

In defense of disorder

At a gathering in the unfinished community hall, Saleha raises a question: "They gave us walls. But what do we want to grow inside them?"

To flee, to remember

Every year, on June 20, World Refugee Day calls on us to remember and hold in our hearts the millions displaced by conflict, persecution, and political upheaval around the world.

When the moon dances with elephants

In Lakshmi’s Secret Diary, Ari Gautier crafts a dazzling, multi-layered narrative that is as whimsical as it is profound.

Writing a memoir

There’s a purgatorial break between these stretches …flaxen against the lights

Reviews

Reviews

BOOK REVIEW: FICTION / Of women, rage, and what burns unseen

These stories subtly highlight how even within patriarchal structures, men, too, are shaped, sometimes twisted by the systems they benefit from.

BOOK REVIEW: FICTION / A kaleidoscopic collection of stories by an outsider

Storytelling is not easy, especially when a few words portray a character with depth and just enough strokes to etch the social milieu for certain classes and creeds and the outcomes of political ideologies in post-independent Bangladesh.

BOOK REVIEW: FICTION / Betwixt and between: Tales from a Nepali-Indian girlhood

Ravindra's prose is brisk, smooth, and detailed, with numerous stories from traditional Nepali and Hindu folklore chipped in, adding layers as the story unfolds.

⁠⁠Recommendations

⁠⁠Recommendations

THE SHELF / 4 Bangla books with tender yet complex father figures

These paternal characters are not easy to love, nor can they love faultlessly themselves. Yet it is precisely this contradiction—their awkward tenderness, silent failures, and undeniable devotion—that makes them so achingly human

THE SHELF / Books for different types of readers on Eid

Eid-ul-Azha is right around the corner, which entails delicious meals, family gatherings, and a little extra downtime between all the Qurbani preparation and feasting.

THE SHELF / 5 books my 5-year-old can’t get enough of

In a world where smart TVs, touchscreen tablets, and mobiles are always within reach, I feel grateful that my daughter, who is almost five and a half, often brings me books and asks me to read them to her for a quick, fun storytime

⁠⁠Features

⁠⁠Features

INTERVIEW / Embracing the bizarre and ‘An Eye and a Leg’

The Asia regional winner of the 2025 Commonwealth Short Story Prize, Faria Basher, in an interview with The Daily Star, opens up about her journey from lifelong reader to emerging writer.

INTERVIEW / An evening at Bengal Parampara Sangeetalay and Dhaka Sessions

In one of their most recent episodes, Dhaka Sessions featured three young artists from Bengal Parampara Sangeetalay to perform in the intimate and literary, lush space of Bookworm Bangladesh

ESSAY / Panic, puke and Palahniuk

Now, two decades later, the question lingers: Did "Guts" really cause waves of fainting spells, or did the legend grow legs of its own?

Ammu reads

Throughout my school years, Ammu would assign a different writer for me to read during each vacation

The poet who declared birth was his eternal sin

Remembering the stateless poet Daud Haider

A tribute to the written word

'A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies'

Aparna Sanyal and the burden of representation in South Asian literature

Aparna Upadhyaya Sanyal’s 'Instruments of Torture' is a powerful literary collection that delves into the psychological and societal torments individuals endure, particularly focusing on themes of beauty standards and the representation of women. Each story in the collection is named after a medieval torture device, serving as a metaphor for the emotional and societal pressures faced by the characters.

⁠⁠Fiction

⁠⁠Fiction

KHERO KHATA / Polychrome

I made my first kite out of white paper scraps; on my 16th birthday, it came to me that they needed a pop of color.

FICTION / Metalheart

I know my engine is dying. I know that, by the time the next Eid rolls around, the busy little humans will have taken me apart to create something new.

FICTION / A sacrifice

When he was handing over the money to Naimuddin, their father, Kalam silently cried, holding Dholi’s neck in the yard.

Vivisection of a cat

When Ullash decided to choose the cat for one of his experiments, our borobhabi, Ullash's mother, didn't raise a single objection

Wash your fruits

I rush to the mirror. My gums are pristine, no wound, no sin. But when I look back at the fruit, the truth reveals itself: the flesh is blackened, writhing with tiny, hungry mouths. The rot has teeth

The importance of being imperfect

Now, an automated metro-rail glides silently through the city. Conversations have become clipped, calculated. Efficiency replaces spontaneity. They call it peace. Rahim calls it absence.

The burden of words

It was not often that I received odd parcels. True, my job at the paper did occasionally warrant a few peculiar hate-mail or rebuttals, but this was nothing of that sort

⁠⁠Poetry

⁠⁠Poetry

Poetry / The poetry of rain

It would rain in the rains / And the rest of this poem would be written by someone else

KHERO KHATA / The people within me

I am not a single name. Not a single wound.

KHERO KHATA / Fragments

Grey chips of rough cement  Rust rubble all around,

When the moon dances with elephants

In Lakshmi’s Secret Diary, Ari Gautier crafts a dazzling, multi-layered narrative that is as whimsical as it is profound.

1w ago

To flee, to remember

Every year, on June 20, World Refugee Day calls on us to remember and hold in our hearts the millions displaced by conflict, persecution, and political upheaval around the world.

1w ago

Daddy issues and female writers: About absent fathers in pop culture

In "Daddy," the speaker's inability to speak is not merely personal trauma but a symbol of women's historical silencing.

2w ago

Ink, jasmine, and the ghost of Ma: Unlearning my father

When it comes to our fathers, especially the ones who try to be good men, a rampant affliction known as patriarchy has left us with no language to imagine them outside of what they were to others. Strip away the roles, and what’s left?

2w ago

4 Bangla books with tender yet complex father figures

These paternal characters are not easy to love, nor can they love faultlessly themselves. Yet it is precisely this contradiction—their awkward tenderness, silent failures, and undeniable devotion—that makes them so achingly human

2w ago

Nani’s salt

Her voice, thin as a whisper, sharp as a blade, sliced through the kitchen air thick with mustard oil and regret.

2w ago

The people within me

I am not a single name. Not a single wound.

2w ago

Polychrome

I made my first kite out of white paper scraps; on my 16th birthday, it came to me that they needed a pop of color.

2w ago

Fragments

Grey chips of rough cement  Rust rubble all around,

2w ago

Mosaicked wounds

This was the way it ended: not with fire, But carried quietly under sleep-beds,

2w ago