Fiction / Sahara
29 August 2026
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Fiction
I have not eaten today. Not on purpose. I will eat later. I simply have not thought of it yet.
Poetry / The finality of nostalgia
29 August 2026
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Poetry
Poetry / Dinner time and death
29 August 2026
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Poetry
Literary Curtains / Patriarchy inversed: Reimagining Rokeya’s Ladyland in 2026
23 August 2026
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Books & Literature
Book Review: Fiction / A novel of radical softness
20 August 2026
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Books & Literature
BOOK REVIEW: FICTION / Cooking up heat
20 August 2026
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Books & Literature
Event Report / In Transit: The Third Annual Slam Poetry at North South University
19 August 2026
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News
Essay / Poet Shamsur Rahman’s drama translation: Eugene O’Neill’s ‘Marco Millions’
15 August 2026
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Essay
Interview / In conversation with Sonia Bahl: Author of ‘Eighteen Inches Apart’
What becomes increasingly evident across Bahl’s three novels is her sustained fascination with the emotional significance of almosts and maybes.
Event Report / Letters across a lifetime: The 20th staging of Love Letters
21 June 2026
On June 19, 2026, the occasion was the 20th staging of “Love Letters”, A. R. Gurney’s Pulitzer Prize-nominated play, translated and adapted into Bangla by writer and translator Professor Abdus Selim. Directed by veteran theatre actor and director Tropa Majumdar and staged by Group Theatre at the Dr. Nilima Ibrahim Auditorium, the production brought together the acting power couple, Ramendu Majumdar and Ferdausi Majumdar. Their performances transformed what could have easily been a simple reading of letters into something deeply intimate and profoundly human.
News Report / NSU DEML offers certificate course in creative writing for the second time
16 June 2026
The Department of English and Modern Languages (DEML) at North South University is pleased to announce the second offering of its Certificate Course in Creative Writing, set to begin in Summer 2026. This innovative seven-week intensive program is designed to cultivate the next emerging literary voices by providing a structured, mentor-led environment that emphasises Bangladesh’s rich cultural narratives.
The shelf / 7 Asian healing fiction recommendations for rainy days
18 June 2026
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The Shelf
You know when the sky trades its brightness for a low, silver hue, and you wrap your fingers tightly around your tea, seeking that small, steady pulse of warmth. This is the essence of healing fiction. Often rooted in the Japanese concept of iyashikei, these stories focus on the quiet spirit through small, everyday moments. You may have already heard of Days at the Morisaki Bookshop or We’ll Prescribe You a Cat. While those popular favourites have opened a door for many, there are a few other tales worth the read.
Reflections / In the age of AI allegations
13 June 2026
Fiction / Body Selim
18 April 2026
The fires of Partition in East Bengal
Three years before Maloy Krishna Dhar’s death, his memoir, Train to India: Memories of Another Bengal (Penguin India, 2009), came out. Born in a sleepy village of Kamalpur in the Bhairab-Mymensingh region next to Meghna and Brahmaputra, Dhar had an illustrious career as a teacher, journalist, intelligence officer, and writer.
12 August 2020
To stitch a tapestry of trauma: Material memories of the Partition of India
A good book stays with a reader long after they’ve read the last word and placed it back on the shelf. It leaves an impression on the mind, whether because the action was exhilarating, the characters raw and real, or because reading it felt like coming back to a home you never knew you had.
12 August 2020
The road not taken, in books
One day many years ago, discovering my cousin’s tattered copy of a Give Yourself Goosebumps book completely changed my ideas about what books could be.
12 August 2020
For a Pinch of Life
A damp siren screamed at the rushing wind. Black and thick smoky clouds slowly clotted in a grey sky, as if preparing for some kind of a ritual.
7 August 2020
Politicking with Pain
I can’t sleep anymore
Piano. Storms. White noise
Nothing works.
7 August 2020
Diary of Pandemic Days
It’s already been several months since we’ve been hurled into the vortex of the coronavirus. The virus lives among us, silent and invisible.
7 August 2020
Beyond the pages of Anne Frank’s diary
On the first day of this month, 76 years ago, Anne Frank wrote her last diary entry. Three days later, on August 4, the building she was hiding in with her family and four family friends was raided by the Gestapos.
7 August 2020
'Shirley' crystallises Shirley Jackson’s contested legacy
Shirley (2020), directed by Josephine Decker and adapted by Sarah Gubbins from the 2014 eponymous novel by Susan Scarf Merrell, interweaves fact and fiction into an imagined narrative about the time when author Shirley Jackson was writing her second novel Hangsaman (1951).
5 August 2020
Earth calls the soul in ‘Inner State’
“A poet’s work is to name the unnameable, to point at frauds, to take sides, start arguments, shape the world, and stop it going to sleep.”
5 August 2020
A book’s plea for a better internet
“Happily, the Web is so huge that there’s no way any one company can dominate it,” wrote Tim Berners-Lee, the man who invented the World Wide Web (WWW) in 1999.
5 August 2020
Conversations from the Daily Star Book Club
On the Daily Star Book Club last week, we asked members how they organise and look after their book collections at home. Here is what we learned:
29 July 2020
'Once Upon An Eid': A rare glimpse into Muslim homes
Diversity can seem jaded when it is employed for the sake of appearing “woke”.
29 July 2020
Technicolour Mughals: Ira Mukhoty brings Akbar to life
Humans are a storytelling species. Yet history, which is but the stories of yesteryears, is taught like a chain of facts and dates.
29 July 2020
Himadri Lahiri’s Diaspora Theory and Transnationalism
The Routledge Diaspora Studies Reader (2017) co-edited by Klaus Stierstorfer and Janet Wilson made significant observations about the increase in global movement of people, capital, products, cultures and ideologies;
24 July 2020
in a sleepless trance
I hold stares - I sing to the moon
Rigid, motionless - senseless woes
24 July 2020
The Retirement
The human race is doing quite well. There was a possibility of a climate catastrophe in the early 21st century but they came to their senses soon enough and managed to deal with it by 2050.
24 July 2020
Summers with Sarat Chandra
Before my mother bought me a copy of Sarat Shahitya Samagra (2003) one fateful summer back in high school, my exposure to Bangla literature had been limited to Feluda and whatever my textbooks offered.
22 July 2020
Mangoes, lychees, and childhood memories in ‘Amar Chelebela’
For me, Amar Chelebela (1991) by Humayun Ahmed would not only be a summer read but also a comfort read, a holiday retreat, a walking tour of a Bangladesh unheard of today, and also a sneak-peak into the daily bustle of a family who redefined literature, science fiction, caricatures, humour and so much more.
22 July 2020
The Bengali summer read
Come June, the season of light reading arrives with the promise of filling lazy afternoons freed from school work or, for adults who can’t manage a vacation, escape in the form of relaxing books.
22 July 2020
Rizia Rahman, an antidote to apathy
For lovers of short story collections, Rizia Rahman’s Char Doshoker Golpo (2011) can be great company on lazy afternoons. Rahman is undoubtedly among the finest writers of literature in Bangladesh, yet her craft goes unnoticed by many from the younger generations today.
22 July 2020
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