The shelf / 7 Asian healing fiction recommendations for rainy days

In the early 2000s, remixed versions of Bangla folk songs flooded neighbourhood corners during evening street matches and nighttime ceremonial events, which blurred the elusive nature of melancholia and yearning in the beats and celebration.

Though human beings speak in prose in everyday life, the astonishing truth is that poetry is humanity’s first artistic love.

Reading these literary works born from the 1952 Language Movement today reminds us of the sacrifices endured by those who fought for Bangla and shows how literature has always been one of the sharpest ways to preserve memory and keep their struggle alive.

You know that feeling: you’re standing in front of your bookshelf, fingers trailing over spines, and you’re not just looking for a story. You’re looking for a companion—a voice that feels like a thought-daughter, a story born from the mind but nurtured by the heart, one that asks big questions but whispers them in your ear. Lately, my own shelf has been whispering back, and it’s been telling me to pass these whispers on to you.

Once in a full moon, Ophelia's flowers received full bloom, beside the daffodils, But they never saw eye to eye, as a narcissist only stares at her own reflection

From now on, selected works of representative Bangladeshi poets will now be available on the Lyrikline platform

Long before Pinterest boards and Instagram FYP, the Eid shongkha dictated what we wore.

The scramble was almost instantaneous and without mercy. Men in freshly tailored panjabis—stitched for the next morning's prayers—threw elbows for the simple right to go back home.

Strings of light stretch across the streets, storefronts glow a little brighter than usual, and the air seems to carry the quiet excitement of Eid drawing near.

The novel, as a form, for a long time, has been concerned with the representation of consciousness.

The exhibition reimagines the book as a tactile, textile based vessel for memory, currently on view at Alliance Française Dhaka from March 10-18, 2026.

Earlier this year, Brandon Sanderson finalised what has been described as an “unprecedented deal” with Apple TV+ to adapt his Cosmere universe for film and television, specifically his Mistborn and The Stormlight Archive series. For years, Hollywood had shown interest in acquiring the rights to his massive fantasy catalogue. But they could not guarantee him creative control. This is the biggest reason Sanderson had not sold the rights until now. With this Apple TV+ deal, Sanderson gets full creative power and will oversee each project personally.

A few days ago on a dreary, grey Sunday, as I was busy with my weekend chores and preparing for the week ahead, I received a call from my sister.

Existentialism is a philosophical theory and a literary perspective. Its central proposition is that the world has no a priori meaning or purpose.

This forest is a tideline–deep with stillness,  where, 

Rishad Choudhury, a historian and Assistant Professor of History at Oberlin College, has been awarded the 2026 Bernard S. Cohn Prize by the Association for Asian Studies for his book Hajj Across Empires: Pilgrimage and Political Cultures After the Mughals, 1739-1857 (Cambridge, University Press, 2004).

Some names act as a spark—for example, Ila Mitra—along with those of Rosa Luxemburg, Pritilata Wadedder, and Matangini Hazra—who is much better known and acclaimed as ‘Nachole-er Rani-ma’ (Queen Mother of Nachole).

I read poems often, and recently I came across a book titled Fenaphul. The cover—painted with soft blue and white watercolour splotches—immediately caught my attention. I decided to read it when I learned that it had received the Oitijjhya-Shantanu Kaiser Literary Award 2025 and was written by a young poet.

In classical studies of sensory experiences, philosophers such as Maurice Merleau-Ponty suggest that bodily sensations constitute our lived reality.

I sit on a chair. Sometimes I wish I were sitting on my old chair of humble plastic, but right now my chair is a plush armchair, with armrests no less, swaying and swooning on its cabriole legs of sturdy s-curve perfection.