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
How I became Tamijer Baap in ‘Khowabnama’
I found myself looking for him beyond the pages of Elias's novel, among the old men who beg on the streets of Dhaka, or in the madman lying on the footpath, trying to say something in a huff or lost in a hallucination on the open road.
14 September 2022, 18:00 PM
The possibilities of slam poetry
The evening of September 8 at The Daily Star Centre saw an outpouring of verses to a live and very interactive audience. Daily Star Books and SHOUT jointly launched our series of Slam Poetry Nights—an evening, every month, of verses recited in the spirit of creative freedom.
14 September 2022, 18:00 PM
Akbar Ali Khan: the “Learned” and self-critical scholar
He intended to break down the jargon of economics, history, politics, and the theories behind it and make them palatable to the everyday readers. He inspired people to take part in shaping the tools and mechanisms that drive the governance of the state.
14 September 2022, 18:00 PM
The Little Mermaid: Has Disney sanitised our expectations from fairytales?
Thanks to 2023's The Little Mermaid, Black and brown girls can finally see themselves as princesses in a film where the protagonist's skin colour is not as instrumental to the story as the princesses' heritage was in Aladdin, Mulan, and The Princess and the Frog.
14 September 2022, 13:24 PM
'Infinite Library': An immersive experience of civilisation at Goethe Dhaka
The Infinite Library did not have books. It consisted of virtual spaces, a set of "eight jars" or volumes that—using a VR journey through the users' phones—told the story of our planet's evolution, starting from the beginning of cosmic dust to human consciousness.
14 September 2022, 06:46 AM
‘Sisters In The Mirror’ deconstructs the concept of "oppressed Muslim women"
"While the book is based on academic research, I've tried to write it for the 'interested educated reader'".
12 September 2022, 12:45 PM
Anyone can be a hero: Why I love ‘Percy Jackson & The Olympians’
From mental health struggles to characters with different racial and LGBTQ+ backgrounds, the series shines a light on people—and heroes—of diverse identities.
11 September 2022, 13:00 PM
In ‘Nehai’, Yusuf Muhammad’s doha verses explore the ceaselessness of life
The aim of a dohakar has always been to open the eyes of the masses. Many of the dohas written by the two prominent dohakars, Soroho-Pa and Kabir Das, have modernist, anti-establishment themes, criticising the social, political and religious conventions of their times.
11 September 2022, 09:25 AM
Economics, literature, history: Akbar Ali Khan in books
Dr Khan focused on Bangladesh’s historical roots as “the last major nation-state to proclaim its identity” —a country that changed its statehood twice in less than 25 years.
9 September 2022, 12:58 PM
In the aftermath of the Palestinian catastrophe—'Minor Detail' by Adania Shibli (trans. Elisabeth Jaquette)
This book is an essential read to understand the extent of the erasure of Palestinian history after the Nakba and life under tyranny in its cities.
7 September 2022, 18:00 PM
A deep dive into a poet’s mind
He had lost touch almost completely with his craft, so much so that he wondered if he even had it in him. But even so, for the sake of writing, he wrote. When the pandemic hit, Helal batted off the dust of his desk and sat down to write. Sitting from a foreign land, the ink flowed again.
7 September 2022, 18:00 PM
Within the narrative folds of ‘Amar Dekha Rajnitir Ponchash Bochhor’ by Abul Mansur Ahmad
Amar Dekha Rajnitir Ponchash Bochhor unfolds a very complex process of how the people create cultures, how cultures create political orders, how orders lead to the formation of political parties, how these parties engage with political activities, and how this in turn shapes the central powers in a state.
7 September 2022, 18:00 PM
South Asia Speaks creative writing mentorship open for applications
The free, year-long fellowship for creative writers from South Asia, is accepting applications until September 30, 2022.
7 September 2022, 07:35 AM
Commonwealth Short Story Prize 2023 open for submissions
Free to enter and open to any citizen, aged 18 and over, of a Commonwealth country, the prize accepts short story entries written in English and translated to English, as well as stories written in Bangla, Chinese, French, Greek, Kiswahili, Malay, Portuguese, Samoan, Tamil and Turkish languages.
5 September 2022, 13:32 PM
‘I enjoy being alone’: Helal Hafiz
Helal Hafiz has been suffering from glaucoma for a long time, alongside complications with his kidney, diabetes and nerve complications.
5 September 2022, 10:23 AM
‘The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power’—One series to fail them all?
What point is Lord of the Rings making in 2022? That people are racist and wage wars? The original trilogy, from two decades ago, was making that same point.
4 September 2022, 08:01 AM
Why ‘Hawa’ reminded me of Coleridge’s ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner’
The song “Shada Shada Kala Kala” seems almost like a visual rendition of “the merry minstrelsy” that breaks out in front of the bride as red as a rose.
2 September 2022, 10:25 AM
No country for honest men in Shahidul Zahir’s “Woodcutter and Crows”
Zahir uses crows as a symbol of magic realism, as found in local folklore, where animals serve as omens of luck both good and bad. The crows seem to bring bad luck to the couple, and wherever they go, the birds follow.
1 September 2022, 07:50 AM
Bleak realities in the shadow of China’s rise
In May 2022, Joanna Chiu won the Shaughnessy Cohen Prize for her debut nonfiction book, China Unbound: A New World Disorder (Hurst, November 2021).
31 August 2022, 18:00 PM
No country for honest men in Shahidul Zahir’s “Woodcutter and Crows”
Prolific writer, novelist, and pioneer of postmodern fiction in Bangla literature, Shahidul Zahir, is known for the unique practice of magic realism in his works.
31 August 2022, 18:00 PM