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
An encounter with Sandeep Ray
"I have lifted from these stories. I’ve stolen from these stories. But you know, I’ve remade the characters so they don’t directly relate to anyone’s biography. But I cannot deny that a lot of the anecdotes, events and arc of the story come from certain family experiences", states Sandeep Ray.
12 November 2022, 11:50 AM
'IN SENSORIUM' BY TANAÏS: The scent of the motherland
The reader might have encountered in their grammar books that the pronoun ‘tara’ in cholito bhasha comes from its shadhu form ‘tahara’. For some of us, years of formal schooling has cemented this etymology in our heads, rendering us unable to find an alternate reality. Breaking these moulds, the author declares, “The word ‘they’ is tara, the word for star”, encouraging one to take a pause and consider these homographs in a new light.
12 November 2022, 08:58 AM
ULAB’s 6th literary salon discusses the local publishing scene
The event is being hosted today, October 12, between 5 and 7 pm at The Auditorium, 6th Floor of ULAB Research Building, House 56, Road 4/A Dhanmondi. It is open for all.
12 November 2022, 06:46 AM
Panihar Public Library: A heritage in ruins
A library containing more than 7702 periodicals, encyclopedias and books on literature, religion, poetry, science and economics—all wasting away from neglect.
10 November 2022, 03:45 AM
Baatighar sale for Humayun Ahmed Boi Mela
Baatighar Humayun Ahmed Boi Mela 2022 will span from November 5 to 15.
9 November 2022, 11:55 AM
5 new 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.
8 November 2022, 11:50 AM
Book app connects Ukrainian fathers with refugee children
The books are helping her family process difficult emotions, Bilan said, as her son Pasha showed visitors his favourite, a book called The Day War Came To Rondo.
8 November 2022, 08:50 AM
Nothing matters, but Albert Camus’s 'The Stranger' does
Because of Camus, I started to believe in the idea of relative truth and realised how differently people may weigh the different aspects and incidents which occur in their lives.
7 November 2022, 11:42 AM
Z-library banned, students in a frenzy
On November 4, domain names of Z-Library, the website which claimed to be the world’s largest ebook library, were seized by the US Department of Justice.
7 November 2022, 03:42 AM
Lawyers say plagiarism claims over ‘The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida’ are unfounded
On October 4, this year’s Booker Prize winning author Shehan Karunatilaka posted on his social media that a claim has been made by a “journalist from Colombo” that the idea for his novel, The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida was “stolen”.
6 November 2022, 06:48 AM
Weike Wang's ‘Joan Is Okay’ tells the story of an antisocial millennial
Joan has always felt not American enough for America and not Chinese enough for China. As a transnational immigrant, even her work ethic is assessed in a dehumanising way.
4 November 2022, 11:55 AM
Loneliness, and what I gained from a Creative Writing degree
The workshops were the sessions I’d look forward to. Someone actually reading your work, studying it, telling you what you do well, telling you what you can improve on, all phrased constructively (“I like this!” was a banned phrase). If you’re pursuing writing, workshopping—on some level or another—is what you’ll need.
4 November 2022, 03:55 AM
Life in modern Dhaka as portrayed in 'A Strange Coincidence and Other Stories'
The 11 short stories encompass a number of ideas, mainly the binary oppositions of the human psyche, all covering the inner conflicts of human life.
3 November 2022, 12:00 PM
NSU to host international conference: 'Ruptures and Resilience: English Studies in the Now'
Organisers told The Daily Star, “We expect this conference to be a grand event for showcasing theoretical ideas and cutting-edge research in the fields of literature, linguistics, and English teaching”.
3 November 2022, 09:50 AM
'Women and Work in South Asia' explores feminism through a South Asian lens
Anasua Basu Ray Chaudhary’s chapter on the trafficking of women, with a focus on India, Bangladesh, and Nepal, teases out the differences in the lived experiences of the Adivasi, Dalit, and other marginalised women.
3 November 2022, 08:45 AM
‘A platform for erasing the cancelling of the other’: ULAB’s Inter-University Student Conference
The 2022 Inter-University Student Conference and Cultural Competition explored different facets of conflict and avenues for conflict resolution on topics within literature, language, linguistics, cultural studies, communication studies, translation studies, and digital humanities.
2 November 2022, 12:00 PM
US judge says Penguin Random House book merger cannot go forward
In hearings held in August, the government argued that the largest five publishers control 90% of the market, and a combined Penguin and Simon & Schuster would control nearly half of the market for publishing rights to blockbuster books while its nearest competitors would be less than half its size.
2 November 2022, 12:00 PM
In praise of Enola Holmes, and the women in mystery who save themselves
Nancy Drew always knows how to save herself and others from seemingly hopeless situations. For instance, she uses specific techniques to free herself from ropes, sends SOS signals with a tube of lipstick, and uses spike heels to break out windows. Her blue convertible car is a symbol of radical feminine freedom.
2 November 2022, 09:00 AM
Spooky October reads for Halloween
Rahman’s central character Mumin, a teacher of Islamic studies in a district high school is summoned by the headmistress to help liberate her young daughter from an apparent demonic possession.
31 October 2022, 04:00 AM
‘Mismatched’: Stories of youth and love
Even with improvisations, the show feels like the book coming to life. The little scenes that have been picked straight from the pages hit very close to home.
30 October 2022, 12:07 PM