It’s hard not to recall our many conversations about literature as I try to summarise Shah Tazrian Ashrafi’s debut collection of short stories. They were always short discussions, opening and closing off in spurts, as happens over text. Exclamations over a new essay collection by Zadie Smith, or a new novel by Isabel Allende.

Begum’s Blunder is a clever adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s Lady Windermere’s Fan. The play transports the Victorian setting to the imaginary Behrampur, the heyday of the Nawabs in India. With Naila Azad Nupur’s direction, and Sadaf Saaz working her behind-the-scenes magic as the producer, the production by Kaleidoscope projects lights on the prism of Wilde’s 1892 play to find their contemporary refractions and reflections in colonial India.

There are few novelists as cruel as Hanya Yanagihara—and in A Little Life (Doubleday, 2015), her pen draws blood. Nine years on, the controversy of the 800-page character study of an irreparably broken protagonist is still ablaze with accusations that it sadistically exploits trauma for profit.

This week, Kyla Zhao, the author of Valley Verified (Penguin Random House, 2024), graced us with an exclusive interview to give us insights into the changing trends in Asian American literature.

The first half of this year has treated us with some truly amazing book-to-screen adaptations like Feud: Capote vs. The Swans, A Gentleman in Moscow, and Ripley. The second half is also unlikely to disappoint. Here are some book-to-screen adaptations to pack the rest of your year with.

The shipbreaking industry implies an industry that processes (e.g., separates and stores) old and discarded steel, copper metal materials, serviceable parts and machineries, fittings, furniture, and other materials in a shipyard or any convenient place. Importing and dismantling ships can generate foreign exchange revenue for the home country and potentially boost economic growth. Bangladesh is making a significant contribution to the global shipbreaking market through resource recovery.

The heinous tragedy and torment of Gaza continues unabated. The outrage of international public opinion, overwhelming support of states in the UN General Assembly, unprecedented Security Council binding resolution, and the Secretary-General’s repeated warning of an apocalyptic situation warranting immediate cease-fire and uninterrupted access of humanitarian assistance have so far gone unheeded in this world order.

'We are truly prisoners of the mind', says Sanya Rushdi, the author-narrator of Hospital (Giramondo Publishing, 2023)

This year, to celebrate Sister Library Dhaka turning four, we acquired a collection of 100 zines curated by the library’s founder, Aqui Thami. The collection will be available for reading at the Goethe-Institut library from June onwards. With the acquisition of this collection, we are finally connected to the mothership Sister Library in Bombay.

There is something in the tactility of books that even non-readers find themselves admiring, and readers more so.

A big believer in social exchanges and developing safe spaces to position art as a medium of healing in community, Thami works on ceremonial interventions, performances, drawings, zine-making, fly posting, and public intervention, brought together by participant involvement

The Road Safety Foundation (RSF) reports that almost 6524 lives have been lost by accident in 2023. Along with deaths, several people are also left severely injured by such accidents.

Lead is a toxic, non-biodegradable chemical element that mostly exists in ore form. Alhough it is a natural element of our environment, due to anthropogenic reasons such as combustion of gasoline, burning of coal, mining, smelting, using lead-based paints and batteries— the level of lead exposure has risen to an alarming level.

The Three-Body Problem is the first book in the Remembrance of Earth’s Past (2006) trilogy by Cixin Liu, a renowned Chinese author.

As long-awaited summer showers arrive to offer respite from the sweltering heat we have been experiencing, here are a few books to accompany you as you cosy up in bed and watch the rain beat down on your windows.

I recently had the sublime experience of watching the recent adaptation of Frank Herbert’s Dune (Chilton Books, 1965), a 2021 and 2023 two-part movie series directed by the passionate Denis Villeneuve. It is, in my mind, a cinematic triumph, and I am thrilled to witness the surge interest these movies have driven for Herbert’s science fiction book series of the same name.

In 2015, a 15-year-old British citizen Shamima Begum travelled to Syria to join the ISIS. In 2019, the Home Secretary of the United Kingdom (UK) decided to revoke Shamima Begum’s British citizenship on the presumption of her Bangladeshi citizenship, a claim which the government of Bangladesh contradicts.

The law schools one sees in Hollywood movies and law schools in Bangladesh have tons of dissimilarities.

Anisul Hoque’s Kokhono Amar Maa-ke is the story of appalling sacrifices made by a mother and her unwavering determination to secure a bright future for her children.

Inevitably, Kaiser Haq’s The New Frontier and Other Odds and Ends in Verse and Prose is about the poet, his poetic predilections, and situatedness at this time of human existence. In many ways it is typical of the verse we have come to expect from our leading poet in English for a long time now, but in other ways it articulates his present-day concerns in new and striking poetic measures.