FLASH FICTION / Chand raat at Mohakhali

Morning sun, and its endearing ardor swathes my spent body, I awake a ghost.

I am from age-old pickle jars, and dusty ancestral bookshelves

The dust jacket cover of Amartya Sen’s absorbing and remarkable memoir shows him as a young boy, with his sister and a cousin at home, looking out at the world. An apt cover image of a fittingly titled book about someone who would be always taking in the world as he went all over

Published in 1920, this was Christie’s debut novel that introduced readers to her unconventional detective, Poirot.

The poems ranged from mental health issues to individual freedom of expression and every musing in between.

I found myself looking for him beyond the pages of Elias's novel, among the old men who beg on the streets of Dhaka, or in the madman lying on the footpath, trying to say something  in a huff or lost in a hallucination on the open road.

The evening of September 8 at The Daily Star Centre saw an outpouring of verses to a live and very interactive audience. Daily Star Books and SHOUT jointly launched our series of Slam Poetry Nights—an evening, every month, of verses recited in the spirit of creative freedom.

He intended to break down the jargon of economics, history, politics, and the theories behind it and make them palatable to the everyday readers. He inspired people to take part in shaping the tools and mechanisms that drive the governance of the state.

Thanks to 2023's The Little Mermaid, Black and brown girls can finally see themselves as princesses in a film where the protagonist's skin colour is not as instrumental to the story as the princesses' heritage was in Aladdin, Mulan, and The Princess and the Frog.

The Infinite Library did not have books. It consisted of virtual spaces, a set of "eight jars" or volumes that—using a VR journey through the users' phones—told the story of our planet's evolution, starting from the beginning of cosmic dust to human consciousness.

"While the book is based on academic research, I've tried to write it for the 'interested educated reader'".

From mental health struggles to characters with different racial and LGBTQ+ backgrounds, the series shines a light on people—and heroes—of diverse identities.

The aim of a dohakar has always been to open the eyes of the masses. Many of the dohas written by the two prominent dohakars, Soroho-Pa and Kabir Das, have modernist, anti-establishment themes, criticising the social, political and religious conventions of their times. 

As a reader, this classic novel will always remain in my heart as a symbol of courage, love, loss and above all, a symbol of enchantment.

One year, a week before Eid-ul-Adha, my grandma, Dadi, came to Dhaka from the village and broke into tears. “What happened?” we asked.

This is about living in a twilight world of a romance with fiction as well as non-fiction. It’s a ménage à trois that I wouldn’t ever end.

Dr Khan focused on Bangladesh’s historical roots as “the last major nation-state to proclaim its identity” —a country that changed its statehood twice in less than 25 years. 

SHOUT and DS Books put on their first Slam Poetry Night.

This book is an essential read to understand the extent of the erasure of Palestinian history after the Nakba and life under tyranny in its cities.

He had lost touch almost completely with his craft, so much so that he wondered if he even had it in him. But even so, for the sake of writing, he wrote. When the pandemic hit, Helal batted off the dust of his desk and sat down to write. Sitting from a foreign land, the ink flowed again.