What to read / What we’re reading this week
14 May 2026, 00:00 AM
What to read
Book Review: Nonfiction / Fara Dabhoiwala’s history misses the one thing that truly matters
1 May 2026, 00:00 AM
Non-fiction review
Reflection / Harper Lee at 100: An enduring echo of justice
28 April 2026, 20:10 PM
Literature
Tribute / Humayun Azad and the courage to dissent
24 April 2026, 00:00 AM
Books & Literature
Interview / Writing what silence carries: Mohua Chinappa on memory, pain, and inheritance
24 April 2026, 00:00 AM
Features
Not just child’s play: Bengal’s rhymes as cultural memory
13 April 2026, 20:12 PM
Culture
Book Review: Nonfiction / Love, wounds, and the making of ‘Hemingway’s Women’
10 April 2026, 00:00 AM
Books & Literature
An Ekushey Book Fair breaking with tradition
21 September 2025, 13:05 PM
Books & Literature
BOOK REVIEW: FICTION / An outlandish jumble of cults, cannibalism, and colonial violence
19 March 2025, 18:00 PM
Books
BOOK REVIEW: NONFICTION / The making of Bangladesh in the global sixties
19 March 2025, 18:00 PM
Books
Writer becomes bestseller after his own employer buys copies worth 9 crore
Chulbul, who has written 29 books of poetry in his career spanning 9 months, characterises his style as introspective, post-modernist neo-absurdism.
30 August 2022, 12:14 PM
‘Beshya O Bidhushir Golpo’ questions a gender-biassed society
The book contains important research on the type of language used by mainstream media in reporting news of rape, torture, and abuse of women.
28 August 2022, 10:54 AM
Rage is not singular for immigrants in Sabaa Tahir's novel
“What’s the word for when someone drinks so much, they are ruining your best friend’s life? Or the word for a man so vengeful about his own past that he wants to destroy your future? What’s the word for a woman who was sick for months, but refused to go to the doctor until it was too late?"
27 August 2022, 07:09 AM
'Celebrating Relationships' is a cookbook for a cause
Every recipe is credited to the person it is inspired from and the country it is staple to. The method of preparation of the dishes is detailed and very well explained, especially for amateur cooks.
27 August 2022, 06:39 AM
What to read if you liked watching ‘Hawa’
The film is a deep dive into Bangladesh’s rivers and the fishermen who hold up the country’s underbelly, along with the revelry, the mythologies that run across the folk culture of majhis and Bede communities.
27 August 2022, 05:57 AM
Disrupted Nature and Community in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein
Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818) is well-known to the literary audience and beyond as the tale of a brilliant and mad scientist who created a horrible monster that in the end brought destruction for its creator.
26 August 2022, 18:00 PM
Two upcoming Pinocchio films—why does he still resonate?
Zemeckis' version will likely be a comforting trip into nostalgia and sentiment, an ode to the power of the human heart to do the right thing despite life's many temptations. At the same time, del Toro's will be a dark fairytale with troubling implications, examining how we puppets can learn to think for ourselves.
26 August 2022, 15:02 PM
What impact did the Partition have on Dhaka's book trade?
The impact of the 1947 Partition was felt in every aspect of Dhaka's printing and publishing business, and the book trade in the new provincial capital took a momentous turn. How did it impact the booksellers, printers, and the material being published?
26 August 2022, 13:07 PM
Ottessa Moshfegh’s ‘Lapvona’: A fairy tale for realists
Lapvona has paupers becoming princes, severe environmental disruptions adding to the owe of the common folk, and the old lady acting as a witch and healer, who serves in the role of a fairy godmother, albeit with a modern touch.
25 August 2022, 13:00 PM
‘The danger in telling a single Partition story is that it completely erases the individual’
1947 was overtaken almost immediately by the language question, and the question of identity.
25 August 2022, 07:05 AM
What HBO’s ‘House of the Dragon’ promises to bring to the world of ‘A Song of Ice & Fire’
Viewers of House of the Dragon won’t find themselves in a similar predicament as the events surrounding the second Targaryen Civil War have already been documented in full in Fire & Blood (2018).
23 August 2022, 07:13 AM
Fahmida Azim “enjoys drawing real people living extraordinary lives”
The comics portray the experiences of the Uyghur community under the anti-Muslim police state imposed in China. The story includes testimonies given to the United Nations Human Rights Council and condensed by Anthony Del Col and art direction by Josh Adams.
22 August 2022, 13:44 PM
Warm Red
A portrayal of a complex psychology, "Warm Red" tells the story of a terribly insecure man.
21 August 2022, 14:12 PM
‘Emily’ and creative freedom in literary biopics
It got me thinking that we are fascinated by the behind-the-scenes lives of our cultural obsessions, and the personal lives of authors can come to feel like public possessions just as much as their works. It is this sense of ownership that can risk conflict over films about literary icons.
20 August 2022, 13:08 PM
How Partition impacted the Dhaka book trade
With the expansion of the publishing business, bookshops also sprang up in various parts of Old Dhaka, particularly in Chawkbazar, Islampur, Mughaltuli and Patuatuli. It is estimated that the number of bookshops in Dhaka till 1900 were no less than 40.
19 August 2022, 10:06 AM
Habibur Rahman's 'Thar': Unpacking the language of the Bede community
Rahman defines the Thar language and its characteristics, origins, and variations and the ethnic identity of the Bede people.
17 August 2022, 18:00 PM
Syed Waliullah: husband, artist, thinker, writer
The book includes excerpts from Syed Waliullah's diary, snapshots of his editorial for Contemporary magazine, handwritten edits on his pieces for Shaogat magazine, and a comprehensive bibliography of the author's work and achievements.
17 August 2022, 18:00 PM
Geetanjali Shree's 'Tomb of Sand': A woman and her many borders
There is a plot embedded here, but this novel is so much more: a long, winding journey, centred on a family, with acute eyes on love and distances within a family, but also through language, Partition and imposed borders, and so much more.
17 August 2022, 18:00 PM
2023 International Booker Prize judges announced
Chairing next year’s judges’ panel will be Leïla Slimani, the French Moroccan novelist known for books like Lullaby (2016) and Adèle (2019).
17 August 2022, 14:40 PM
Mashiul Alam joins prestigious Iowa International Writing Program
Journalist and author Mashiul Alam has been selected as a resident of the 2022 Iowa International Writing Program (IWP), among the world’s most prestigious creative writing residencies.
16 August 2022, 14:21 PM