FLASH FICTION / Chand raat at Mohakhali

VS Naipaul, the Nobel and Booker winning writer of A House for Mr Biswas (listed frequently as one of the 100 greatest English-language novels of the 20th century) and A Bend in the River, died on August 11 at the age of 85. He had visited Dhaka in 2016 as a guest of honour at Dhaka Lit Fest. Here are some notable excerpts from his session at the literary festival, titled “The Writer and the World” [after his collection of essays], which illustrate his struggles in his early writing career.

British author VS Naipaul, a famously outspoken Nobel laureate who wrote on the traumas of post-colonial change, dies at the age of 85.

Awakening your wanderlust, in hand is the ultimate travel guidebook to Britain's rich literary heritage. Here, innumerable destinations feature multiple authors, landscapes and legendary characters that transport both the studious and the curious into unforgettable literary trails.

Mesmerised within “zones of blindness and insight,” the British anthropologist, author and multiple temporalities enthusiast Christopher Pinney has emerged with perhaps the finest homage to evanescence yet written, The Waterless Sea: A Curious History of Mirages.

There is sorrow—death too—separation's pangs scald as well—

The grove of Srish Poramanik was renowned for nuts. It was right by the roadside and full of ancient trees. It was dark like the night even during day time.

We always talk about life. And then when people die, we talk about their deaths in terms of life—a life they will live for eternity in all

“How do I make you understand,

Tahmima Anam attracted an international readership when her debut novel A Golden Age (2007) won the Commonwealth Writer's Prize for Best First Book in 2008.

Some days ago, a friend of mine who stays abroad, sent me a gift. Since he is very special to me, I was extra-eager to open the box and find out what it was.

My tongue is standing by the road

The scene must have caught attention of those people who tend to come and go through the Farmgate area. How old may that

Lina slumped into the chair as Chameli left her room. She did not know how to tell her mother that she did not like to visit Reba

In The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath writes about a young woman, Esther Greenwood, experiencing the publishing industry on a summer internship, as well as life in New York City, for the first time.

Set in Jackson, Mississippi in the early 1960s, The Help by Kathryn Stockett talks about racial segregation at its worst. The book is narrated by three very different women; Aibileen, a black maid who is raising her 'seventeenth white child', Minny, another black maid unable to keep a job due to her loud mouth and hot head, and Miss Skeeter, a white woman who wants to be a writer.

Almost four hundred prime-time television recipe shows. Over 24,000 Likes on the Facebook page, ‘Alpana Habibs Cooking Club.’

The inkwell is trembling, There is the smooth rise and fall of memories, The hesitant fingers wrap the quill, The words come alive on paper, Is the scheme of life completeness of whole?

“A novel asserts nothing; it provides a framework for thinking about things.” said Martin Amis, a British writer, in an interview with Rachel Cooke published in The Observer of 1 October 2006.

The inkwell is trembling

“A novel asserts nothing; it provides a framework for thinking about things.” said Martin Amis, a British writer, in an interview with Rachel Cooke published in The Observer of 1 October 2006. Shortlisted for the 2013 DSC Prize for South Asian Literature and long listed for the 2011 Man Asian Prize