BOOK REVIEW: NONFICTION / A firebrand’s journey to Washington from Barisal
“Agunmukha” translates to “fire-mouth” in English. The word mirrors the tumultuous life of Noorjahan Bose, shaped by her early years in cyclone- and flood-prone small towns of Barisal; her experience of sexual violence at the age of 10; the loss of Imamuddin, her first love and husband, to smallpox; single motherhood; and her later marriage to Swadesh Bose, a Hindu man—an interfaith union opposed by society.
11 hour(s) ago
Books & Literature
BOOK REVIEW: FICTION / Through Agnes’ eyes: Reimagining Shakespeare’s lost years in ‘Hamnet’
11 hour(s) ago
Books & Literature
TRIBUTE / On his 76th death anniversary: The other side of George Orwell
28 January 2026, 17:46 PM
Books & Literature
Beyond stereotypes: Rupert Grey’s ‘Homage to Bangladesh’
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
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
NEWS REPORT / NSU DEML launches inaugural certificate course in creative writing
17 January 2026, 16:00 PM
Books & Literature
EVENT REPORT / Bangladesh’s first interactive mental health book launched
15 January 2026, 13:43 PM
Books & Literature
EVENT REPORT / “Words are, to me, a way of understanding truth”: An hour of history and poetry at ULAB
Students at the University of Liberal Arts, Bangladesh (ULAB) crowded into a packed classroom on a winter morning on Sunday, November 30, awaiting the start of a program that would be part interview, part poetry reading. “Meet the Poet: Shaheen Dil—In Conversation with Dr Mushira Habib” organised by the Department of English and Humanities was an hour-long dive into the life and work of poet Dr Shaheen Dil, a Bangladeshi writer and retired academic, banker, and consultant living in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
5 December 2025, 13:50 PM
Books & Literature
EVENT REPORT / Making of a mother: Discussing ‘IVF and Childlessness In Bangladesh’
13 November 2025, 16:13 PM
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
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
Klara and the Sun: Depths of humanity in artificial intelligence
Despite Klara and the Sun (Faber, 2021) coming out on my birthday, and soft science fiction being not only a genre I regularly read but write, I found myself with no real connection with the Nobel Prize-winning author’s latest work.
7 April 2021, 18:00 PM
A miracle in milk
“Once there was a severe flood in the month of Magh.
24 March 2021, 18:00 PM
Battle cries and sound waves
“Muktishongram-e ami jog diyechhilam bishuddho ekjon biplobi hishebe”.
24 March 2021, 18:00 PM
Women and Bangladesh's publishing industry
The publishing and literary world in Bangladesh have considerable visibility of women: some are authoritative figures in the literary and academic world, some run their own establishments and bookshops; others occupy senior positions in many of the local publishing houses and literary committees. However, like the systems and society we currently operate in, this industry is also influenced by the larger patriarchal structure.
10 March 2021, 18:00 PM
Hope springs eternal
The natural and political world bloom to life in the pages of Ali Smith’s Spring (Penguin Random House, 2019), the brilliant third installment in her seasonal quartet of books.
17 February 2021, 18:00 PM
Netflix’s ‘The White Tiger’: A Lukewarm Translation of Rage On-screen
One can’t help but be excited about Netflix’s recent attempts at bringing to life and screen valuable works of South Asian fiction. Today’s focus, The White Tiger, which premiered on Netflix on January 21, 2021, was a debut novel by the Indian-Australian writer and journalist Aravind Adiga, who won critical acclaim and the Man Booker Prize in 2008 for his critique of class and caste boundaries in India.
27 January 2021, 18:00 PM
The Portrait of the Writer as a Critic
The books which are closest to my heart and which evoke a certain sense of otherworldly glee are the ones that are themselves odes to literature, reading, and writing.
20 January 2021, 18:00 PM
On Edward Said: Different shades of an intellectual
Edward Said is one of only a handful of intellectuals who can truly be said to have educated and influenced multiple generations on the Palestinian cause and the different prisms of thought through which we now look at literature, art, and history. In many ways, we are the heirs of the man who popularised the term, “Orientalism”; a man who championed the voices and struggles of the Global South in the Anglo-American sphere.
7 January 2021, 11:44 AM
Reading Re(ar)view: A Wrap on Reading Challenges and Recording Stats
As the final pages of 2020 flick away, a lot of us find ourselves cracking open our diaries, or signing into our reading apps to log in the last few books of the year.
30 December 2020, 18:00 PM
Bangladesh at 49: A Portrait in Books
It has been almost five decades since Bangladesh became independent. After all these years, it is only natural to ponder over our failures and achievements as a nation. Here are a few books that can help one reflect on the state of our nation today.
16 December 2020, 18:00 PM
Remembering and Rereading Rokeya: Patriarchy, Politics, and Praxis
December 09 marks both the birth and death anniversaries of Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain (1880-1932). The Rokeya Day in Bangladesh also falls on December 09. Indeed,
4 December 2020, 18:00 PM
Romila Thapar on why dissent is inevitable
In an interview with Daily Star Books, historian and author Romila Thapar expands on her arguments in Voices of Dissent. She discusses how dissent has evolved through time in the Indian subcontinent, how multi-voiced communities can coexist, and reading material that offers a deeper understanding of dissent in region.
3 December 2020, 08:37 AM
In ‘Azadi’, Arundhati Roy explores the many layers of freedom
Arundhati Roy’s latest, Azadi (Penguin India, 2020), is a collection of nine stand-alone essays, most of which were delivered as lectures or published as columns between 2018 and 2020.
25 November 2020, 18:00 PM
Reclaiming Historical Spaces through Fiction
The Adventures of China Iron by Gabriela Cabezón Cámara (Charco Press, 2019) begins in the poor encampments of a village in 19th century Argentina, with the protagonist marvelling at the hope and light she finds in the sight of a puppy playing in some dirt.
18 November 2020, 18:00 PM
Himu ki mahapurush?
Himu has none of the intelligence or powers of deduction of Misir Ali. Himu says the wrong thing at the wrong time. He helps people, but only after causing undue chaos and misery.
13 November 2020, 15:06 PM
‘Dhaka Sessions’ brings music to a bookstore
Cramped amidst the rows and rows of books at Bookworm Bangladesh, performers, instruments, and cameras came together to produce music over the past few weeks. On Saturday, November 14, 2020, the first episode of Dhaka Sessions will be aired on YouTube, with the cult favourite band Nemesis as the first performers.
11 November 2020, 18:00 PM
10 HORROR NOVELS FROM BANGLADESH AND ABROAD
Halloween is merely a cover--our lives seem plenty steeped in horror this year, confined within physical and psychological walls, breathing in
28 October 2020, 18:00 PM
The untapped powers of Bengali folk horror
When I was a child, every night, I’d ask my parents to tell me a story when they tucked me into bed. From talking trees to scheming foxes, the mystical realm of Bengali folklore was a bottomless well from which my pre-adolescent mind drank with thirst. It led me to what can only be deemed as the Holy Grail of Bengali folklore: Thakurmar Jhuli (1907).
28 October 2020, 18:00 PM
Rumaan Alam’s third novel is impossible to leave behind
Rumaan Alam is interested in contradictions—our presumptions of who should own what, in the textures of modern life.
28 October 2020, 18:00 PM
On Zadie Smith’s Bangladeshi characters
I am not a Bangladeshi immigrant living in a Bangladeshi neighbourhood somewhere in Kilburn, London like Samad Iqbal and his family from White Teeth (Hamish Hamilton, 2000).
21 October 2020, 18:00 PM