There are any number of ways one can approach Rahat Ara Begum’s collection of short stories, 'Lost Tales from a Bygone Era: An Anthology of Translation of Urdu Stories', assembled, contextualised, and published in this book by her loving grandchildren and their siblings

‘Fit for the Gods: Greek Mythology Reimagined’ (Vintage, 2023), edited by Jenn Northington and S. Zainab Williams, is a collection of classic myths with a twist

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.

Suzanne Collins’ Hunger Games series has captivated pop culture with its bold take on tyranny, sacrifice, and resistance, spanning Katniss Everdeen’s blazing defiance in The Hunger Games (2008) to her final stand in Mockingjay (2010) against Coriolanus Snow’s cold cruelty.

Beyond the celebration of Eid, this book also explores themes of love, loss, and the grief of spending a special occasion without a loved one.

Haruki Murakami’s The City and Its Uncertain Walls, its English translation published last November, plunges the reader into a kind of metaphysical vertigo that never reaches a concluding synthesis.

Harvard killed my love for reading. When my advisor took me out for a celebratory dinner an hour after my doctoral defense in July 2012, I struggled to read the menu.

In Good Material, Dolly Alderton uses her sharp humor and keen observations to explore the challenges of adulthood.

Beginning to read Fine Gråbøl’s What Kingdom, translated from the Danish by Martin Aitkin, is like sitting in a silent room, alone, and a voice begins to speak as though from beside you.

From A Handmaid’s Tale (McClelland and Stewart, 1985) to The Hunger Games (Scholastic, 2008),

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.

These nuanced characterisations of those who have suffered terribly and are desperately trying to rebuild themselves are what have kept me hooked to the series.

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.

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.

‘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.

Everett’s breezy, fast-moving retelling of Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884) is about putting in some due respect.

As of writing this article, the official death count in the Palestinian genocide has surpassed 42 thousand lives. In my room, I quietly sit and read excerpts from Han Kang’s The Vegetarian (Portobello Books, 2015) in celebration of her winning the Nobel Prize in Literature.

'The Hippo Girl and Other Stories' holds up a mirror to a society that judges and ridicules those that do not adhere to its shortsighted vision of a homogenised culture.

The best part of this book is perhaps the fact that all the weird, bonkers cultish stuff just happens with no rhyme or reason to it.