We can’t just wish things away, we can’t disown parts of our culture and country because they don’t fit our particular ideal. That is a cop-out, an easy way out, that is claiming we are pristine, and the dirt lives elsewhere, claiming we are saints and that is not our sin. 

Winter nights are surely the best time for ghost stories or tales of spirits returning from the dead. This year, The Daily Star is preparing for some chilling winter night haunting.

Alice Beck Kehoe (1934-) is a family friend, and I have her permission to use her first name in short for this essay. After reading Alice’s autobiography Girl Archaeologist: Sisterhood in a Sexist Profession (2022), Raudah, my wife, recommended the book to me with confidence that I would love it.

Tahmima Anam, the Bangladesh-born British writer, is known at home and abroad for her spontaneous and vivid writing style. She is widely distinguished as a novelist and columnist with a profound awareness of her native and international culture.

Nineteen performers recited poems in Bangla and English, their topics ranging from nostalgia, personal growth and daydreams to mental health, death, and trauma.

Who is Annie Ernaux?

“Free light source plus [a] dude I can sit and ruminate with, it’s perfect.” 

Protiti’s poems are mostly ‘bare’ conversational musings exploring ‘selfhood, separation, exile, love and longing’.

The memoir provides a good primer to Nusrat's life as a musician and the legacy he left.

I discover that teaching is more about reading people.

Fanfiction is just a devoted fan's mind asking, "What if?" 

"Alap" is a book of confession, written by two famous writers and intellectuals of India-Pakistan in the aftermath of 1947 partition.

The celebration is incomplete without spending time with loved ones, good food and a pile of books and magazines waiting to be read. 

Publishers are fearing that the number of readers as well as buyers will gradually decrease. 

On August 21, Fahmida Azim, a Bangladeshi born, Seattle-based artist and journalist, was awarded the 2022 Pulitzer Prize for Illustrated Reporting and Commentary. The winning team—with Fahmida Azim as artist, Josh Adams on art direction, and Anthony Del Cole as the writer—won the award for “How I escaped a Chinese internment camp”, a visual story on a woman who survived the abduction and internment of Muslims in Chinese camps. The comics reveal insider accounts of China’s anti-Muslim measures, particularly their treatment of the Uyghur community in China.

In The Footsteps Of Rama attempts to retrace the fabled journey of Rama, travelling from Ayodhya to the Dandakaranya forest and Panchavati (near Nashik) and on to Kishkindhya (close to Hampi), Rameshwaram and Sri Lanka. 

For these morbid thoughts, go to the mountains and cry. For these morbid thoughts, kill all your darlings. For these morbid thoughts, shower as soon as you can. For these morbid thoughts, know that it won’t pass.

Jules Verne opened my eyes to the wonderful world of science-fiction, a world where the pinnacle of human imagination meets the beauty of the known. 

Besides the brilliantly unconventional addition of an Intelligence Agent as the main audience, the story’s language, unflinchingly charged with a humorous tone, is enough to keep a reader’s eyes glued to the screen.

The program was divided in two sections; the first part was dedicated to launching the book titled, Praner Prodip Jwaliye (Bangla Academy, 2022). It is a collection of poetry and rhymes written for the Prime Minister’s 75th birth anniversary and were composed by celebrated personalities.