Beyond stereotypes: Rupert Grey’s ‘Homage to Bangladesh’
Rupert Grey, a descendant of Charles Grey and best known professionally as a leading libel and copyright lawyer stood against this statement. “If Bangladesh is a basket case,” Grey tells The Daily Star, “then it is so in the best possible way.” For him, the term collapses under the sheer vitality of the country. A single square metre of a Bangladeshi street, he argues, holds more energy than entire neighbourhoods in London. Where life in England often unfolds in rigid routines, Bangladesh thrives in spontaneity—where a hanging lighter at a tea stall can become a moment of shared choreography.
25 January 2026, 12:24 PM
Books & Literature
FLASH FICTION / The rickshaw artist
24 January 2026, 01:52 AM
Books & Literature
FLASH FICTION / Pirouette of a phoenix
24 January 2026, 01:48 AM
Books & Literature
POETRY / Memories
24 January 2026, 01:36 AM
Books & Literature
BOOK REVIEW: FICTION / Lessons in Chemistry : A novel that reads you
22 January 2026, 15:54 PM
Books & Literature
EDITORIAL / Why read?
22 January 2026, 00:00 AM
Books & Literature
THE SHELF / 7 new books to look out for in 2026
22 January 2026, 00:00 AM
Books & Literature
EVENT REPORT / Md Ashanur Rahman receives the International Creative Arts Award 2025
19 January 2026, 17:38 PM
Books & Literature
NEWS REPORT / NSU DEML launches inaugural certificate course in creative writing
17 January 2026, 16:00 PM
Books & Literature
INTERVIEW / Reclaiming the unwritten: Kanika Gupta on colonialism, embodiment, and the art of remembering
Gupta shares her insights on reclaiming forgotten histories, reimagining myths, and connecting ancient narratives to contemporary ecological and social concerns.
22 November 2025, 11:51 AM
Books & Literature
REFLECTIONS / Moon, memory, manifesto: A personal, lyrical essay on Atrai
21 November 2025, 18:28 PM
Books & Literature
REFLECTIONS / The risk of becoming: Notes on translation and transformation
7 November 2025, 18:33 PM
Books & Literature
THE SHELF / 5 books on women’s everyday terror to read this Halloween: The horror that persists
31 October 2025, 13:45 PM
Books & Literature
THE SHELF / 8 books to read if you’re fascinated by the louvre heist
30 October 2025, 13:30 PM
Books & Literature
EVENT REPORT / Unveiling ‘The July Resolve': Stories of resilience & resistance
14 January 2026, 16:01 PM
Books & Literature
EVENT REPORT / Singing a 900-year-old song: Exploring Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam with Zeba Rasheed Chowdhury
3 January 2026, 10:26 AM
Books & Literature
EVENT REPORT / An eco-critical look at Sultan: Reading the manuscript of ‘Sultan Er Krishi Jiggasha’
With the aid of Duniyadari Archive, Pavel Partha’s soon-to-be-published book Sultan Er Krishi Jiggasha is a new addition, which looks at Sultan’s work from an eco-critical perspective.
8 November 2025, 11:43 AM
Books & Literature
EVENT REPORT / Zia Haider Rahman on his award-winning novel at NSU’s Colloquium series
7 November 2025, 11:48 AM
Books & Literature
NEWS REPORT / “Curious love letter”: Wole Soyinka responds after US cancels visa
He responded to the situation with grace, mentioning “I like people who have a sense of humour".
30 October 2025, 10:45 AM
Books & Literature
EVENT REPORT / Stepping into the uncanny world of Franz Kafka
26 October 2025, 11:55 AM
Books & Literature
THE SHELF / 6 books that I read at the end of last year… I hated 5 of them
You know that feeling when you crack open a new book and you’re convinced that this is the knight in all its paperback shining armour that will save you from your reading slump? Yeah.
7 January 2026, 18:00 PM
Books & Literature
TRIBUTE / Remembering Razia Khan Amin: The pen that forged a generation’s courage
28 December 2025, 12:19 PM
THE SHELF / 5 books to rescue you from brainrot
17 October 2025, 14:45 PM
6 books that bring Bangladesh to life for diaspora teens
10 October 2025, 19:11 PM
BOOK REVIEW: GRAPHIC NOVEL / The tragedy of ‘Demon Slayer’
10 October 2025, 14:30 PM
THE SHELF / 7 lyrical fantasy books: Where prose becomes poetry
7 October 2025, 11:14 AM
BOOK REVIEW: NONFICTION / In which Arundhati gives it those ones
1 October 2025, 18:00 PM
FICTION / The truth factory
12 September 2025, 18:54 PM
BOOK REVIEW: NONFICTION / The Indosphere and its discontents
10 September 2025, 18:00 PM
Essay / Sonnet of the riverbank: Remembering Al Mahmud, the poet
29 August 2025, 19:49 PM
On the many flavours of horror in children’s literature
What do we make of the mysterious thread that connects these stories not by genre, but by an imagination so wondrous they leave room for an underlying horror, and the many things that can mean?
5 December 2023, 13:45 PM
Love, loss, and hope in Tehran
Overnight, the saffron summer afternoons and evenings of dreamy stargazing tumble into a tale of grief, guilt, and pain.
5 December 2023, 01:55 AM
A multidimensional look at the impacts of Islamophobia around the world
This book is an incredibly informative and well-researched introductory book for understanding the construction of Islamophobia in the West and its impacts on Muslims across the globe.
4 December 2023, 13:55 PM
JK Rowling’s 'The Running Grave': A souring tale that clumsily rolls downhill
Review of 'The Running Grave' (Sphere, 2023) by Robert Galbraith
1 December 2023, 05:20 AM
Growing up with Mark Twain
On a chilly winter morning of November 2010, I came across a story that would stamp my childhood permanently. It was the winter vacation and the school finals were just over. While playing board games at one of my friend’s, I found quite a picturesque book filled with illustrations and art. It was titled, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876).
30 November 2023, 14:00 PM
Keep your secrets close and your tech support closer
Addison Square is one of those hidden enclaves where well-heeled Londoners tuck themselves away to create bubbles of “civilised life” from which they can exclude the riffraff surrounding them in the mega-city they call home.
29 November 2023, 18:00 PM
On the Palestine Question: Roald Dahl, Harold Pinter, and others
On Saturday, February 15, 2003, I was part of a 15-coach convoy from Portsmouth to London, UK.
29 November 2023, 18:00 PM
There's a Jo March in every woman
Whether it was in the past or in the present, Jo March instilled herself in every woman.
29 November 2023, 14:00 PM
Disempowering voices of propaganda: The BDS movement in books
When millions of lives are at stake and indiscriminate violations of human rights are perpetuated, there is no longer space to entertain the debate on whether the art should be separated from the artist
28 November 2023, 13:00 PM
Nobody writes like Arundhati Roy
When a dear friend recommended The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy, it took me one page to grow up.
24 November 2023, 16:00 PM
Despair and death in ‘Truth or Dare’
Bangladeshi literature in English has had a considerably late start compared to its South Asian counterparts in India and Pakistan. A few exceptions aside, a consistency came to be seen only by the early 2010s.
22 November 2023, 18:00 PM
In search of lost eden
From the beginning we see Benjamin Honey, the patriarch of the island, longing to return to his past, in a garden, the Eden of his childhood where he reminisces about being with a woman who might or might not have been her mother.
22 November 2023, 18:00 PM
Revisiting ‘Chobir Deshe, Kobitar Deshe’
The book captures all the enjoyable experiences of travelling, and the food they ate, and provides descriptions of France's seas.
18 November 2023, 15:55 PM
The progressive depiction of women in ‘Devdas’
In some ways, Sharatchandra places the blame for Devdas's ensuing sorrow on his lack of courage, made all the more noticeable in comparison to Parbati's courage in breaking social norms despite the dire consequences it could have for her.
17 November 2023, 18:00 PM
A masterful portrait of normalised misogyny and sexism
Award winning Irish writer Claire Keegan is a master of short fiction. Her previous novel, Small Things Like
15 November 2023, 18:00 PM
The complete works of Mahmudul Haque: The chorus of a unique sun
Mahmudul Haque was a writer who championed the modern and independent stream of Bangla literature.
15 November 2023, 18:00 PM
Discovering enlightenment and creativity at Dhaka Flow Festival
In addition to the activities, the event offered an array of distinctive stalls for festival goers, featuring sustainable and healthy products rooted in Bangladesh.
15 November 2023, 15:55 PM
The Hermitage Residency: In Conversation with Arif Anwar and Julia Philips
Last week, Daily Star Books interviewed Bangladeshi-Canadian writer Arif Anwar, author of The Storm (2018), and American novelist Julia Phillips, author of Disappearing Earth (2019).
14 November 2023, 16:00 PM
Witnessing the council of animals in the Sundarbans
Mayurpankhi’s books have the calibre to engage readers of all ages. This book is not an exception either.
13 November 2023, 15:55 PM
‘Shohoj Kothai Orthoniti’ A localised flavour of economics
Flipping the pages of a textbook often makes me feel like I’m trapped in the US. We studied economics from an American lens, using American textbooks,
8 November 2023, 18:00 PM