The shelf / 7 Asian healing fiction recommendations for rainy days

Using a hashtag is activism In a world of biterature.

My brittle nails become the sharpest knife Under the light of obscure scrutiny

As the calendar turned to February 2, 2026, marking what would have been the 111th birthday of Khushwant Singh, the silence from his iconic Sujan Singh Park residence feels particularly loud. Singh was more than a writer; he was a cultural weather vane who pointed toward honesty even when the winds of political correctness blew the hardest.

The God of the Woods caught my attention while I was excavating for my next read on Goodreads.

“There is no place on earth where women are safe,” declares Inés, the protagonist of Isabel Herguera’s animated film Sultana’s Dream (2023).

It is a winter day in a small town at the far eastern edge of the Himalaya, in the Chinese province of Yunnan. The province is known for its mild climate.

In a small room in 50 Purana Paltan line, shelves groan under the weight of posters, photographs, tickets, flyers, souvenirs, folders, books, and fading documents.

For years, speculative dystopian fiction has trained readers to expect the worst: scorched planets, collapsing governments, ruthless technologies, and futures where survival is the only victory left. Solarpunk pushes back against that narrative. Instead of asking how the world ends, it asks a far more radical question: what if we fix it? What if cities worked with nature instead of against it? What if technology served communities, not corporations? And what if hope wasn’t naive, but necessary?

“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.

One of the great pleasures of reading enough of the plays of William Shakespeare is that, after a while, you feel like you know him. British actor Patrick Stewart famously stated, “...he feels like an old friend—someone who just went out [...] to get another bottle of wine.” While Shakespeare scholars have succeeded in creating a rough Shakespeare biography based on historical documents, many of them will admit that there are large gaps in our knowledge.

It is undoubted that George Orwell is one of the most important political writers of the 20th century. Labelling him a political writer reflects how deeply his life and works were influenced by the events he lived through.

Rupert Grey, a descendant of Charles Grey and best known professionally as a leading libel and copyright lawyer stood against this statement. “If Bangladesh is a basket case,” Grey tells The Daily Star, “then it is so in the best possible way.” For him, the term collapses under the sheer vitality of the country. A single square metre of a Bangladeshi street, he argues, holds more energy than entire neighbourhoods in London. Where life in England often unfolds in rigid routines, Bangladesh thrives in spontaneity—where a hanging lighter at a tea stall can become a moment of shared choreography.

In Dhaka, the traffic doesn’t run; it limps. At seven in the morning, the buses are full, coughing black air, CNGs wheezing past, rickshaws threading between them like colourful tops.

Emily’s right leg trembled as she stood alone on the wooden stage, the darkness that surrounded her felt almost alive.

Inner monologue: “Life is a bit sometimes. You don’t know what might happen the next moment.

My memoirs of 2025, do you know I want to forget you?

Lessons in Chemistry is a powerful read for anyone who feels alone in a male-dominated world. For those who have been vilified for having a voice, dignity, and the courage to exist unapologetically in a world that resists change, this novel proves galvanising.

There is a curious bite to the air now. Notwithstanding the terrifying levels of AQI that threaten to permanently damage our lungs, heart, and brain, the air feels promising—of new beginnings, of renewed potential, of reevaluating the old and embracing the new.

First on our list, we have the fiction debut of Jennette McCurdy, author of the widely fascinating and heartbreakingly hilarious memoir I’m Glad My Mom Died (Simon & Schuster, 2022). A 17-year-old is the protagonist of this story, a girl with too much hunger and not enough steadiness, who walks into a creative writing classroom and latches onto the one adult who seems to notice her.

On January 18, 2026 novelist and essayist Md Ashanur Rahman was awarded The International Creative Arts Award 2025 by the International Creative Arts, Language & Development Research Centre of the University of Dhaka for his outstanding contribution to literature and its role in Enriching Minds and Inspiring Lives.