Yale University Department of History chair Alan Mikhail’s new book God’s Shadow: Sultan Selim, His Ottoman Empire, and the Making of the Modern World (Liveright, 2020) takes a much-welcomed fresh look at Selim I, a figure of signature cultural and historical importance in Turkish history.

When the lockdown was enforced and we were all confined to our homes, I began organising my bookshelf and no longer had stray paperbacks all over the house. I could finally spread my legs while taking a nap. This was received with great enthusiasm and approval of my mother, and confused glares of my cat.

Sherlock Holmes, the famous detective of 221B Baker Street, has a sister. Her name is Enola Holmes, and despite being much younger than him, she shows powers of deductive reasoning that foretell her advent into the world of mystery and intrigue.

Did you watch our very special Teacher’s Day Facebook and YouTube Live with the immensely popular Professor Asrar Chowdhury of

Unpublished short stories of between 2,000-5,000 words written in English, Bangla, Chinese, French, Greek, Turkish and several other

Tens of thousands of men sailed across the ocean to a land they’d never before heard the name of. They fought long and hard, in the world’s

When I was in 9th grade, a friend introduced me to the works of director Lars von Trier, starting with the film Dogville (2003). I’d never seen a feature film play out so well, in such intensity, with nothing but a largely empty sound stage for a film set.

Bright and cold on a winter afternoon, in the hours leading up to lunch, the kitchen of a Bengali family sizzles with tension. Refrigerated meat is thawed and spices are crushed and pestled.

When it comes to book reviews, I have found an interesting paradox—the better a book is, the easier it becomes to write about.

Travis Dandro’s King of King Court: A Memoir (Drawn & Quarterly, 2019) is a large, dense book that reads light and fast. The coming of age story is packed with the raw emotional power of the author’s traumatic childhood.

About this book, I’d like to speak simply. Because Nabil Rahman’s Water Bodies (Nokta/ Boobook, 2020) speaks simply too, without frills or embellishment.

At some point in time, we decided cynicism was synonymous with intelligence and wisdom. We praised cynics for their realism and scoffed at those who held onto fairy tales.

The 40 poems and photographs of wooden sculptors in Water Bodies reflect poet-artist Nabil Rahman’s experiences with art, immigration, intergenerational trauma, artificial intelligence, spirituality, and more.

As a tiny five-year old in the ’80s, I first discovered and liberated an Archie comic from a teenage cousin the way oil rich countries are liberated: by force. I used superior tactics of crying, pleading, whining and bargaining.

Instead of the thrill of meeting friends and professors in a bustling, energised campus, going back to school only involves a computer this September.

As humans we teeter on the oddest of precipices. We are only animals: apes unusually adept at surviving Earth’s harsh playbook for life. Like the multitude of organisms we share it with, we live, multiply, and without exception, we die.

Korean literature has been enjoying a literary renaissance for quite some time through translation, from the likes of Hang Kang’s beguiling yet gruesome novel, The Vegetarian (2007) to Yeonmi Park’s heart wrenching memoir, In Order to Live (2015).

When The Fault in Our Stars (2012) first released, it brought on a powerful surge of change, not only in our reading lists, but in our perception of terminal and mental diseases and even to the genre itself.

When we think of migration, the images in our collective narratives are constructed primarily with masses of people on the move, leaving places they belong in for foreign lands. In her latest book, Sonia Shah, an American science journalist and author, critically takes apart the boundaries around human wandering both in our lands and our mind-sets.

Migration of Bengalis from South Asia to the outside world started with taking up jobs as lascars (sailors) in the British East India Company's ships which carried precious goods from the Indian subcontinent, such as spice, tea and cotton. In addition, from the second half of the nineteenth century, Bengali educated and wealthy gentlemen began travelling to England mainly to pursue higher education.