The shelf / 7 Asian healing fiction recommendations for rainy days

Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey (2026) is everything audiences expect from a modern mythological epic: grand battles, brutal violence and a hero caught between glory and guilt. Adapted from Homer’s ancient Greek poem, the film is an impressive feat of action-adventure cinema. But for all its spectacle, it loses something when the myth remains so firmly centred on its hero: the women whose stories are left underwritten.

In an educational landscape often dominated by rote memorisation and rigid textbook formats, a collaborative initiative between the BRAC Institute of Languages (BIL) and The Daily Star's English in "Schools (EIS) initiative" is redefining how young learners engage with language. Through the compilation and adaptation of Learn English for Success: Climb Higher (Class VI-VIII) and Learn English for Success: Climb Higher (Class IX-X), this partnership stands as a beacon of fresh, dynamic, and deeply interactive learning for students.

How do you stay connected to your own culture and roots while living thousands of miles away from home?

Open Instagram or TikTok for 10 minutes and you will likely run into him: a nervous Prague insurance clerk, dead for a century now, staring out from a grainy black-and-white photo with a quote about cages and birds stamped across it. Beside him sits a brooding Russian novelist who once faced a firing squad and lived to write about it afterward.

On Friday, September 5, 2026, a small crowd gathered beneath the bright summer sky, drawn together by their shared passion for poetry. Organised by Intersectional Network Bangladesh (INB) in collaboration with Circle of Sorts (CoS), Kobitabela—a poetry reading event—was hosted at the Garden Bistro, Uttara.

Publishers in Bangladesh expressed that the recent surge in AI activity has not yet had a significant impact on their publishing practices or the Bangladeshi book market.

In the Azimpur government colony of the 1970s, two occasions—Ashura and ShabeBarat—turned familiar lanes into processional corridors and classrooms of companionship.

Literature has survived censorship, plagiarism, ghostwriters, bad editors, worse reviewers, and the occasional panic that a book might be dangerous enough to ban.

There is growing outrage about the recent trend of Artificial Intelligence companies destroying huge quantities of books in order to train their AI language models.

Dinner time is the only time Maa gets the scope to speak to me. About what she did that day.

This city engulfs the bluest of the skies with its towering skyscrapers in the name of evolution, 

I have not eaten today. Not on purpose. I will eat later. I simply have not thought of it yet.

Ambassador Islam passionately believed that a nation of 180 million people should chart its own path, maintaining good but never subservient relationships with global powers. He was acutely aware of “our traits as a nation” but remained firm in his belief that the country could only thrive under Lincoln's doctrine of government “of the people, by the people, and for the people.”

“Ladyland is not perfect,” remarks Sultana, one of the protagonists in the much awaited play, “Project Ladyland 2026”. Produced by HerStory Foundation in collaboration with the British Council and Women of the World Foundation, the play was greeted by a full house this weekend. Staged at the Bangladesh Mohila Samiti theatre, the performance made a splash on Friday, August 14.

Reading through P. Paramita’s debut novel Appetite, I was reminded of my own days of wrestling fanaticism, around 2008, when I would eat through hours of TNA (I was particularly obsessed with Sting, even aping his facepaint at home with talcum and markers).

Last month, in an auditorium of poets, novelists, essayists, artists, I sat in a haunting silence after Palestinian author Sarah Aziza ended a lecture about writing from the ruins.

The Department of English and Modern Languages (DEML) at North South University hosted the third annual edition of its Slam Poetry event on August 15 2026. This event was a continuation of a tradition that began in November 2024, which has developed into a platform for students to explore poetry through performance and to engage with the diverse forms of creative expression within the university community. This year’s slam poetry event, themed “In Transit”, marked the largest response the initiative has received since its inception, with 76 submissions received and 12 participants ultimately selected to perform.

When the time comes, As I am lying on the floor,

I wish I wish  to the wishing well I had more time with you,

John Dryden, an English poet, literary critic, and social reformist of the 17th century, believed that “it is only for poets to translate a poet”.