In Deena Mohamed’s Shubeik Lubeik (originally published in 2015 and translated in 2023 by Mohamed herself), wishes have not only drastically altered the fabric of daily life in Egypt, but the world at large.

Though on its surface Sanya Rushdi’s  Hospital, translated into English by Arunava Sinha and recently longlisted for the 2024 Stella Prize, looks to be a breezy, short read—it is anything but. With her rather flattened, sparse prose, Rushdi has managed to write an enduring piece of autofiction, a compelling account of psychosis that neither sensationalises nor withers away any sentimentality from the struggles of mental health.

A petition to ban elephant cruelty in Bangladesh has sparked much legal and ethical debates. In this write-up, the writer addresses and maps the relevant legal discussions relating to cruelty to elephants, and other animals in general.

In Bangladesh, medical negligence is a day-to-day instance now from wrong diagnoses to surgical failures frequently harming or even killing patients.

In the realm of day-to-day legal matters within private organisations, the traditional practice of appointing in-house legal counsel has been the norm, and a vast number of lawyers and advocates are actively engaged in this domain.

Set in 1979, this is a story of monsters—the ones who prey on the vulnerable, the ones that exploit our weaknesses, and the ones that we elevate to positions of power.

The sun was up. The sky was a perfect cerulean blue, the neighbourhood blissfully quiet. Through my window, I relished the sunny first day of 2020, with a cup of tea in my hand.

The author, architect Tanwir Nawaz, besides expressing his thoughts, ideas, and artistic struggles within a body of professional works, has poured his emotions and nostalgic memories into Exploring the World of Architecture and Design.

Chip War, a highly praised book written by Chris Miller who teaches International history at Tuft University’s Fletcher School, USA, is a New York Times bestseller.

With International Women’s Day coming up tomorrow, 8 March, it becomes increasingly important for us to not only identify and acknowledge, but also actively work towards alleviating the stark gender gap in STEM fields

A month ago, as I waited for a friend in Banani, I decided to grab a packet of cigarettes. I’m not good at calculations for loose change and the vendor, old and seemingly disoriented, was having a hard time too.

The craze that once prevailed in academia over postcolonialism no longer seems to hover around there anymore.

Liton categorised his partnership with Towhid against Rangpur as the best in his career.

Dense textbooks with words more twisted than the shapes my lips could contort themselves into—for the longest time, my perception of non-fiction didn’t deviate from this singular image.

Reading this book was uncomfortable, like a car crash waiting to happen, it was hard to read and even harder to put down.

Shahaduz Zaman is a familiar face in Bangladeshi literature, whose literary career spans decades of fruitful work. He regularly writes columns for Bangla newspapers, has written a few notable biographical fiction, such as Ekjon Komolalebu (Prothoma, 2017), based around the life of Jibanananda Das, and has garnered some duly needed appreciation for ethnographic work on the history of medicine during the liberation war.

Some among us might have wondered what it feels like to hold a lit bomb between our palms. One that will go off inevitably yet its spark, heat, force, weight, and pulsating nature are so fascinating that we are unable to put it down or look away, all the while knowing at the end of the wick we too will be destroyed—a chosen death, a voluntary annihilation.

The title of the first of Professor Rehman Sobhan’s two-part memoir suggests that it is about his “years of fulfilment”; the subject matter of its sequel therefore would be about the “untranquil” years that followed.

As we close the curtains on the first month of the new year and step into the second, here at Star Books and Literature,  we are thinking back on the year we had.

Originally from Massachusetts, international development consultant Elizabeth Shick was living with her family in Yangon, Myanmar from 2013-2019 and got to witness not just Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy win the 2015 elections by a landslide, but the military crackdown on Rakhine state that led to the Rohingya exodus into Bangladesh in 2017.