Obayed Haq’s Bangla novel, Arkathi, is almost a bildungsroman tale filled with adventure and self-reflection. In true bildungsroman fashion, where the protagonist progresses into adulthood with room for growth and change, a bulk of Haq’s novel talks about the spiritual journey that an orphan, Naren, takes through a forest in order to mature, and comes out on the other side to realise a community’s deep, hidden truth.
Someone in a chat group somewhere called Sally Rooney the ‘Taylor Swift’ of the literary world, and now I cannot unsee it.
In January 2023, I was sitting in the crowd, listening in on a panel at the 10th and possibly the final edition of the Dhaka Lit Fest. Sheikh Hasina had already been in power for almost 15 years, and it felt like the sun would never set on Awami League, at least not in my lifetime.
I was a Twilight girl.
‘Shabnam’ is a dewdrop in Persian. Shabnam (1960) is the name of Syed Mujtaba Ali’s passionate love story that stretches beyond the history of nearly a century ago.
Being an ardent admirer of K-pop culture, I wonder why I was hitherto unaware of this gem of a book, One Left by Kim Soom, and the excruciatingly painful truth it delineates.
Everett’s breezy, fast-moving retelling of Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884) is about putting in some due respect.
Review of ‘The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida’ (Sort of Books, 2022) by Shehan Karunatilaka
Happy Hour greeted me like a warm hug. This is definitely one of the sweetest books I’ve read this year, and possibly one of the sweetest books I will ever read.
Reading this book was uncomfortable, like a car crash waiting to happen, it was hard to read and even harder to put down.
Shahaduz Zaman is a familiar face in Bangladeshi literature, whose literary career spans decades of fruitful work. He regularly writes columns for Bangla newspapers, has written a few notable biographical fiction, such as Ekjon Komolalebu (Prothoma, 2017), based around the life of Jibanananda Das, and has garnered some duly needed appreciation for ethnographic work on the history of medicine during the liberation war.
Some among us might have wondered what it feels like to hold a lit bomb between our palms. One that will go off inevitably yet its spark, heat, force, weight, and pulsating nature are so fascinating that we are unable to put it down or look away, all the while knowing at the end of the wick we too will be destroyed—a chosen death, a voluntary annihilation.
Originally from Massachusetts, international development consultant Elizabeth Shick was living with her family in Yangon, Myanmar from 2013-2019 and got to witness not just Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy win the 2015 elections by a landslide, but the military crackdown on Rakhine state that led to the Rohingya exodus into Bangladesh in 2017.
My introduction to the Bangla translation of Japanese books happened during my visit to Baatighar Chittagong. It was there that I encountered the Bangla translations of works by one of my favourite Japanese writers, Haruki Murakami, back in 2021. Then last year, I found myself enchanted with the promise of Morisaki Boighorer Dinguli (Abosar Prokashona, 2023); the allure of the black edition of the book boasting ebony pages and stunning artwork had me yearning for the book months before its scheduled release.
Jhumpa Lahiri has always been the rare author whose prowess in the art of the short-story far surpassed her novelistic talents.
Ghostwriting is not new, and Millie Bobby Brown is not the first celebrity to hire a ghostwriter. But, soon after she published her book, she came under fire for using one.
As the novel progresses, you peel back layers of history between Claire and her grandparents and realise that the Korea issue isn’t as straightforward as our protagonist imagined.
The melancholic, tuned nostalgia of finishing a journey was being caressed by the soft yet upbeat rhythm of the journey coming forth.
At a time when everyone is grappling with financial instability while combating the icy spree, Bill is grateful enough to have survived another year with his wife Eileen and five daughters.
