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
The dangerous game of Marlon James—Can genre fiction be great literature?
James seems to be saying to the establishment, to the same generous folks who once gave him the Booker and propelled him to the stratosphere: Go ahead and say this is not literature, I dare you.
31 August 2022, 18:00 PM
Writer becomes bestseller after his own employer buys copies worth 9 crore
Chulbul, who has written 29 books of poetry in his career spanning 9 months, characterises his style as introspective, post-modernist neo-absurdism.
30 August 2022, 12:14 PM
‘Beshya O Bidhushir Golpo’ questions a gender-biassed society
The book contains important research on the type of language used by mainstream media in reporting news of rape, torture, and abuse of women.
28 August 2022, 10:54 AM
Rage is not singular for immigrants in Sabaa Tahir's novel
“What’s the word for when someone drinks so much, they are ruining your best friend’s life? Or the word for a man so vengeful about his own past that he wants to destroy your future? What’s the word for a woman who was sick for months, but refused to go to the doctor until it was too late?"
27 August 2022, 07:09 AM
'Celebrating Relationships' is a cookbook for a cause
Every recipe is credited to the person it is inspired from and the country it is staple to. The method of preparation of the dishes is detailed and very well explained, especially for amateur cooks.
27 August 2022, 06:39 AM
What to read if you liked watching ‘Hawa’
The film is a deep dive into Bangladesh’s rivers and the fishermen who hold up the country’s underbelly, along with the revelry, the mythologies that run across the folk culture of majhis and Bede communities.
27 August 2022, 05:57 AM
Two upcoming Pinocchio films—why does he still resonate?
Zemeckis' version will likely be a comforting trip into nostalgia and sentiment, an ode to the power of the human heart to do the right thing despite life's many temptations. At the same time, del Toro's will be a dark fairytale with troubling implications, examining how we puppets can learn to think for ourselves.
26 August 2022, 15:02 PM
What impact did the Partition have on Dhaka's book trade?
The impact of the 1947 Partition was felt in every aspect of Dhaka's printing and publishing business, and the book trade in the new provincial capital took a momentous turn. How did it impact the booksellers, printers, and the material being published?
26 August 2022, 13:07 PM
Ottessa Moshfegh’s ‘Lapvona’: A fairy tale for realists
Lapvona has paupers becoming princes, severe environmental disruptions adding to the owe of the common folk, and the old lady acting as a witch and healer, who serves in the role of a fairy godmother, albeit with a modern touch.
25 August 2022, 13:00 PM
‘The danger in telling a single Partition story is that it completely erases the individual’
1947 was overtaken almost immediately by the language question, and the question of identity.
25 August 2022, 07:05 AM
What HBO’s ‘House of the Dragon’ promises to bring to the world of ‘A Song of Ice & Fire’
Viewers of House of the Dragon won’t find themselves in a similar predicament as the events surrounding the second Targaryen Civil War have already been documented in full in Fire & Blood (2018).
23 August 2022, 07:13 AM
Fahmida Azim “enjoys drawing real people living extraordinary lives”
The comics portray the experiences of the Uyghur community under the anti-Muslim police state imposed in China. The story includes testimonies given to the United Nations Human Rights Council and condensed by Anthony Del Col and art direction by Josh Adams.
22 August 2022, 13:44 PM
‘Emily’ and creative freedom in literary biopics
It got me thinking that we are fascinated by the behind-the-scenes lives of our cultural obsessions, and the personal lives of authors can come to feel like public possessions just as much as their works. It is this sense of ownership that can risk conflict over films about literary icons.
20 August 2022, 13:08 PM
How Partition impacted the Dhaka book trade
With the expansion of the publishing business, bookshops also sprang up in various parts of Old Dhaka, particularly in Chawkbazar, Islampur, Mughaltuli and Patuatuli. It is estimated that the number of bookshops in Dhaka till 1900 were no less than 40.
19 August 2022, 10:06 AM
Habibur Rahman's 'Thar': Unpacking the language of the Bede community
Rahman defines the Thar language and its characteristics, origins, and variations and the ethnic identity of the Bede people.
17 August 2022, 18:00 PM
Partition and the Dhaka book trade
In the first instalment of ‘Books On Record’, our new digital series on book history, Shamsuddoza Sajen writes about the impact of the Partition of India on Dhaka’s book trade. Read the article on The Daily Star website and on Daily Star Books’ Facebook and Instagram pages.
17 August 2022, 18:00 PM
Syed Waliullah: husband, artist, thinker, writer
The book includes excerpts from Syed Waliullah's diary, snapshots of his editorial for Contemporary magazine, handwritten edits on his pieces for Shaogat magazine, and a comprehensive bibliography of the author's work and achievements.
17 August 2022, 18:00 PM
Geetanjali Shree's 'Tomb of Sand': A woman and her many borders
There is a plot embedded here, but this novel is so much more: a long, winding journey, centred on a family, with acute eyes on love and distances within a family, but also through language, Partition and imposed borders, and so much more.
17 August 2022, 18:00 PM
2023 International Booker Prize judges announced
Chairing next year’s judges’ panel will be Leïla Slimani, the French Moroccan novelist known for books like Lullaby (2016) and Adèle (2019).
17 August 2022, 14:40 PM
Mashiul Alam joins prestigious Iowa International Writing Program
Journalist and author Mashiul Alam has been selected as a resident of the 2022 Iowa International Writing Program (IWP), among the world’s most prestigious creative writing residencies.
16 August 2022, 14:21 PM