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
When stories are born on the field
Stories, whether in reality or on the field, play an important factor in shaping how we as humans see both sports and life.
1 December 2022, 12:55 PM
Andy Warhol & Truman Capote talk out their anxieties
Andy Warhol suggested they tape their conversations on his Sony Walkman, to which Truman Capote agrees.
1 December 2022, 12:00 PM
Jane Borges’ 'Bombay Balchão' is a crafty explosion of flavour
The characters crackle with life, quirky and contradictory, despicable and sympathetic in turns.
1 December 2022, 04:00 AM
Nadeem Zaman’s new novel takes ‘The Great Gatsby’ to Dhaka
To be published by Hachette India in early 2023 and meant to be circulated exclusively in South Asia, the novel is “a story of passion, decadence, infidelity, privilege, identity, and the many confounding faces of love and loss in contemporary Dhaka.
30 November 2022, 12:00 PM
6 books we recommend this week
When you go to a book-store, it is often difficult to choose from the plethora of newly released books available. The following list should help when deciding what new books to buy.
27 November 2022, 12:06 PM
5 books on Argentina’s football history
For fans of the Argentinia team, these five books can be a portal to favourite moments in football history.
26 November 2022, 14:49 PM
What ails Bangladesh's publishing industry?
The price we pay for the local paper takes advantage of that extra duty, and practically we are stuck with buying low quality local paper with questionable output often.
26 November 2022, 11:38 AM
Bob Dylan publisher sorry for $600 book’s replica autographs
The allegedly “hand-signed” copies were not individually inscribed.
26 November 2022, 09:00 AM
Blood, sweat, and football
The doctors told me that I should forget about playing football. But I just had one thing on my mind: I was going to be back on the pitch again and prove everyone wrong.
24 November 2022, 12:02 PM
Hope over fate
Finding himself at the epicentre of the disaster, Abed realised that a large number of deaths (an estimated 500,000) in the “world’s deadliest known tropical cyclone” were not necessarily caused by the natural disaster.
24 November 2022, 00:00 AM
On poet Sufia Kamal: A revolutionary journey
She came out from the cocoon of the accepted designated roles of women and marched forward to live an extraordinary life.
23 November 2022, 11:44 AM
Children’s author Ali Imam no more
Ali Imam, the author of more than 600 books, breathed his last on Monday evening in the Bangladesh Medical College Hospital in the capital’s Dhanmondi area.
21 November 2022, 15:40 PM
Simon & Schuster's owner to let sale to Penguin fall apart, sources say
Bertelsmann will owe Paramount a USD 200 million break-up fee as a result of the transaction falling apart.
21 November 2022, 08:55 AM
7 books to get you pumped up for football World Cup season
With the FIFA World Cup 2022 starting today, tensions run high around the country. Avid football fans have already dawned on their favourite team’s jerseys and hoisted their country’s flags alongside that of Bangladesh’s. The entire world will be glued to their tv screens till a winner emerges to claim the Football World Cup.
20 November 2022, 13:04 PM
Tales of a development sector doyen
The book doesn’t only become a memoir of the writer’s life as a development worker, but also a tribute to the late Sir Abed and his magnanimity as a human being and a visionary.
19 November 2022, 12:45 PM
On Gabriel García Márquez’s unpublished manuscript
She has been coming to this hotel for the last 28 years, ever since her mother died, and has chosen to stay in the exact same room as she does every year. She uses the same road from the hotel to travel to her mother’s resting place and buys flowers from the same African woman.
19 November 2022, 03:55 AM
In Iffat Nawaz’s debut novel, 1971 is not an open wound
Shurjo’s Clan uses magic realism to conjure Shurjomukhi’s freedom fighter uncles, who were martyred in Sylhet’s tea gardens during the 1971 Liberation War, and her grandmother, who took her own life shortly after the 1947 Partition.
18 November 2022, 07:34 AM
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.
17 November 2022, 05:46 AM
HarperCollins union begins strike, citing wages, diversity
In recent years, entry- and mid-level employees throughout publishing have been increasingly vocal on social media about their unhappiness with wages, workloads and diversity.
14 November 2022, 08:37 AM
Himu taught me it was okay to not be normal
Himu not only made me look beyond goals that lead to a luxury of life, but he also taught me to enjoy the tiny bits that make life agreeable.
13 November 2022, 11:45 AM