FLASH FICTION / Chand raat at Mohakhali

He did not look at me once. His eyes were engrossed in deep thought; to me he seemed to be dipping in the deep waters of memory. Bent with age, he sat at his desk.

The man set out for town at the wake of dawn. It was the month of Phalgun. A nip of chill was still in the air. Wrapping himself in a tattered shawl, he started walking. He had a long way to go, a small river to cross. And then, the town would come into view.

In the digital age, eBook reader apps have partially, or in some cases, fully replaced conventional printed books.

Amar Ekushey Boi Mela has been one of the most celebrated literary events of the country for decades. Every February, this book fair celebrates our love for language and literature, with a festive mood that lasts for a month. But what does it take to prepare for a fair this big? 

This novel explores the adventures of one Rustam, better known as Palowan Bhai. In Dhaka, even the wild animals fear Palowan Bhai for his quick-to-rise temper. But what happens when he visits the calm community of a village?

Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic (Houghton Mifflin, 2006) unfurls with heated family dysfunction, subtle and soaring ugliness, shame, and queer confusion. This is a story of a closeted gay father and his queer daughter, and how their bearings align.

First, the government authorities are always behind in planning and leave things for the last minute to reach concrete decisions, and often, these decisions don’t take into consideration pragmatic solutions that are sustainable and maintainable in the long term.

After so many years, more than a decade or so, when you pass my home, don’t forget to take a look at the humble roof of haystack and wattle if not the humble me waiting to have a look at your eyes for an epoch.

North Avenue beach was crowded with the Gold Coast moneyed, the downtown young and rich, the tanned, tight-bodied volleyballers, all of them white, and a healthy portion of the rest of the city’s masses, a United Colors of Benetton sampler, among which numbered the five of us. School was out for the summer, the next three months sprawled before us like the city from the Skydeck of Sears Tower.

Sirjaul islam Quadir is both an individual and a representative of his time says Prof. Sirajul Islam Chowdhury in his ever-eloquent words put together in the forward to the book.

In a particularly American but artsy, cinematic production depicting the friendship between David Lipsky and David Foster Wallace,

Shortlisted for the JCB Literature Prize 2021, Name Place Animal Thing (Zubaan Books, 2021) by Daribha Lyndem evokes feelings of nostalgia in a reader merely with its title—it is a popular game among kids. Now, as I hold the novella in my hand, my heart is in a strange turmoil.

Winter was slowly taking off, with the February breeze following through, with the falling of the Debdaru leaves, with the advent of a new season.

Sometimes tears flow like rain for cakes that 

Nobody was around in the grey end of a Sunday. I strolled past the deserted park; the swings and slide failed to evoke the joy of old. The park looked cold, sequestered, and threatening in the dim light. It was strange and eerie to see not a soul there!

In his five-decade long career as a teacher of the English department at Dhaka University and at other institutions and as a scholar, Professor Fakrul Alam has had countless grateful students and admiring readers of his scholarly works that are not merely scholarly in a literary sense but are also personal and public.

Edited by Kudret Bulbul, a professor of Political Science and Public Administration at Ankara Yildirim Beyazit University, Turkey, Md Nazmul Islam,

Too often, the representation of Muslims in arts and culture has been tainted by the shadow of “extremism”.

In “Mother’s Milk”, a short story by Tahmima Anam which appears in Our Many Longings: Contemporary Short Fiction from Bangladesh (Dhauli Books, 2021), an unnamed narrator gives us brief snatches of her life as she attempts to endure…something. One can’t really call it an incident; it is, seemingly, more a state of being that requires her to keep joy at bay. Consciously, deliberately.

In a book launch held at the capital’s Bengal Shilpalay today, Gyantapas Abdur Razzaq Foundation and University Press Limited held a discussion session on Professor Razzaq’s Political Parties in India, his 1950 PhD thesis for the London School of Economics, published now for the first time in book form.