The very day in bless’d disarray, this is no time to stay in place. As begging kids and homeless dogs flee the chasing skies above,

It was not very late when he saw her inside the cafe. 

The poems in this ambitious collection are by women poets writing in Bangla, who have emerged from the land that is now Bangladesh—having lived, or are still living here, or are now part of the first-generation diaspora.

All these years walls of our town stood tall, home to white-winged birds, nostalgic sun, tales too deep for us to tell; last night walls came down crashing,

Come, let’s smoke a cigarette together on a dark veranda and count how many flats

I love it when Paulo Coelho’s books start with a challenge or a quest, and The Archer (Penguin Random House, 2020), accordingly, does not fail to open with an intriguing pursuit.  Upon reading the prologue, I thought I was in for a good read; it was rich and humorous, and in line with the writer’s usual mystical tone.

So many words have been used to describe this nation in the last 50 years. Started from a bottomless basket, and along the way we’ve been called resilient, passionate, corrupt, greedy, full of warmth.

Katie Kitamura’s latest novel, Intimacies (Riverhead Books, 2021), is a stunning follow-up to its critically acclaimed predecessor, A Separation (2017).

The first traceable progeny of the lineage, Syed Fida Hussain, had settled in Delhi during the reign of the fourth Mughal Emperor, Jahangir, with his son, Syed Golam Hussain and his grandsons, Syed Faizuddin Hussain and Syed Mozaffar Hussain; they eventually moved to Kolkata and finally settled down in Dhaka.

She lies on the bed, a broken canvas. Fragments and splinters of an old frame, Faded colors of painted priceless picture, Greys and white, crooked dark veins, wrinkled paper skin.  Frames abound on the wall’s fortress,

Long after I was done reading The Illuminated (HarperCollins India, 2021), by Anindita Ghose, I kept thinking about Girl in White Cotton (2020) by Avni Doshi. If one had to choose any recent novel that captured the crevices of a vacillating mother-daughter relationship accurately, it would be these two.

Identity is mercurial: it shifts and morphs into a new being at the change of a breeze. That change is glacial, and often happens on its own volition; but one can also grasp a new identity, hold it tight till it engulfs the old, and thereby change the trajectory of their life completely.

This dawn is unvarying, lovely, peaceful, dewy, Morning sky has opened its store of breathing clouds,

I am convinced that while writing her book, The Begum and the Dastan (Westland Publications, 2021), Tarana Husain Khan’s aim was to leave her readers in a literary stupor, dizzy and yearning for more.

Shengdey awoke suddenly on a bed with an old man sitting beside him. “Are you okay, my child?” He asked, idly stirring a boiling pot of tea.

Darkness on a piece of paper Black soaks the white

They took away my land, I said: Thank you for building the railroad.

Two flats facing each other He’s on the stairs, she’s at the door

"I want to propose a deal with the Bazar."

I see it in the words, Where your hand dragged over the wet ink.