FLASH FICTION / Chand raat at Mohakhali

With the onset of the new millennium in the 21st century, there seems to be a revival of interest in the space, in the eastern part of South Asia, historically known as Bengal, and the people who inhabit this space, the Bengalis.

I had decided to write a brief review of Selima Chowdhury’s book when it was first published, but what with one thing or another making me put it off, a couple of years rolled by, and we found ourselves caught up in a pandemic with no end in sight.

As of December 31, 1919, a total of 1.4 million Indians were recruited to various theatres of the First World War. Among them, approximately 563,369 were “followers or non-combatants”.

The people we meet in Elif Shafak’s The Island of Missing Trees (Viking, 2021) are haunted by terrible tragedies from several years past, by a beautiful island divided into two.

On the occasion of the birth anniversary of author, journalist, and politician Abul Mansur Ahmad (1898-1979) on September 3, 2021, we publish an excerpt from his essay, "Our Language and Our Literature", first published in The Concept magazine in 1965 and later collected in the book, 'End of a Betrayal and Restoration of Lahore Resolution' (1975).

The adoption of the ghazal by Nazrul, with renewed fervour in the late ’20s and ’30s, signaled an understanding that his earlier literary and linguistic world was an impermanent one, as was a politics in which the unity of Hindus and Muslims was achieved through an appeal to a shared culture and language.

From August 2021, Daily Star Books was excited to have joined Bookcentric’s monthly reading challenge, which invites readers to read and review books following each month’s designated theme. Under August’s theme of books with nautical themes, here is what our readers read—and reviewed—last month!

Typical of any Samanta Schweblin story from her International Booker-longlisted collection, Mouthful of Birds (OneWorld, 2019), a sense of anxiety is strongly perceptible here, especially through the characters Fi and Pe. One grows afraid of them as they start showing both lovingly caring and Big Brother-like tendencies. What heightens the ominous halo surrounding these two is the hostages’ inability to translate their emotions; why would someone who provides for you not give you a way out?

Originally published as a series of short stories in the 1940s, the Foundation series—expanded later with a string of prequels and sequels—became Asimov’s greatest contribution to the genre and remains, to this day, one of the greatest reads for any SF connoisseur. 

Ataur Rahman, well known humour writer, diplomat, and former director general of the postal department, passed away from a Coronavirus infection yesterday. He was 79 years old. 

Renowned author and translator Sheikh Abdul Hakim passed away at his Madartek residence in Dhaka yesterday afternoon.

Being accused of copying Humayun made me want to create something of my own, something that wouldn’t be considered mainstream, but nor would it be too out of the box. I wanted to reflect on realism.

The prestigious Commonwealth Short Story Prize competition returns for its 11th iteration, opening its doors for short story submissions from September 1 to November 1, 2021 (11:59pm in any time zone). 

Guns Germs and Steel was first published in 1997 and received the Pulitzer Prize for nonfiction the following year. Reading this book has been an incredible experience. Each time I put the book down for the day I had to gasp for air because I had been totally immersed, rather like deep sea diving and looking at the world in a new dimension.

I arrived in Islamabad as a schoolboy along with my family from Dhaka in January,1968. The new capital city of Pakistan was still in its nascent stage of development.

In Shadow City: A Woman Walks Kabul (Vintage Books, 2019), Khan delineates a personal map of Kabul, taking the reader through the “shadow city” that can be found in its still-standing monuments, libraries, pleasure gardens, theatres, shopping malls, wedding halls and graveyards.

Samai Haider’s Tilmund’s Travel Tales (Guba Books, 2020) is a story about a little boy named Tilmund who has a great wish to follow in his grandfather’s footsteps and travel the world.

Henry Kissinger is infamous in Bangladesh for allegedly terming the newly-independent country a “bottomless basket”, but this statement appears to be the least of his crimes against the people of Bangladesh.

Whereabouts (Penguin India, 2021) is Jhumpa Lahiri’s third novel, published originally as Dove mi trovo (2018) in Italian and translated to English by the author herself, as she did with her work of nonfiction, In Other Words (2015).

Journalist Mohammad Al-Masum Molla, one of The Daily Star’s lead reporters of environmental, political, and human rights issues, sees the launch of his new book, Bhasan Char: Bastion in the Bay (Agamee Prokashoni, 2021), on August 25.