Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain (1880-1932) pursued her sustained literary, educational and political activism in the face of stiff social opposition from critics unwilling to accept her gender egalitarian messages positively.

In 1811, Percy Bysshe Shelley was expelled from Oxford for writing a pamphlet promoting atheism. This wasn't his first offence.

Nirupama Subramaniam meets writer and historian Ramachandra Guha on the sunlit balcony of the authors lounge at the Bangla Academy during the Dhaka Lit Fest. Despite the weight of being a public intellectual and academic, there is a lightness about his presence. The author of India before Gandhi (Penguin; 2013) and Patriots and Partisans (Penguin; 2012) speaks at a fast pace, stabbing the air to make a point, as though he feels each word deeply. It is almost like listening to a story.

War is a sky shattering fierce roar of clouds, quick footsteps

“Do you believe in love? That love exists? Between a man and a woman?”

Every Bohemian fairytale I have read starts off with a man who has too many kids and too little money; money which he impulse buys a rope with...

We all have gone through that horrible phase of curling up in our beds and crying over the deaths of our favourite fictional characters...

Franz Kafka is an icon of 20th century literature. The Metamorphosis, a novella written in 1912, is considered as his seminal work of fiction.

As had been happening to him a lot lately, especially during a long wait, he dozed off. It occurred to him that he could not keep his...

They are walking altogether - dragging their feet

This is an excerpt of Nesar Nadim's début novel "Demons". The book is available in the bookstores and at rokomari.com

Humayun Ahmed is the most celebrated writer of contemporary time and one of the best story tellers in the history of Bangla literature.

I'm grateful to the novelist James Meek for introducing me to a new critical term. Reviewing Jonathan Franzen'sPurity (“From Wooden to Plastic”, LRB, 24/09/15), Meek writes that the first appearance of Leila Helou“is couched in the leaden terms of the Unaccountably

I have been asked to write a few words about my experience, with the purpose of offering inspiration to young Bangladeshis. But my personal history seems to me so particular as to be of little use to anybody: for one thing, although I was born in Bangladesh, I grew up mainly in the West.

I first came across the term “Pulling a Robert Jordan” while reading a 2011 New Yorker essay on George R.R. Martin and the treatment some ...

In our family my maternal grandmother was known as Choti Amma. She was indeed my nana's second wife. The first wife or Buri Amma...

In remembrance of Sukumar Ray, the great Bangalee poet, story writer and playwright Bangla literature will forever be indebted to.

I pray not for you to guard me in danger time and again

Whatever bravado I might show to the world, only I know how greedy I am for a night's – even a single night's – sleep. I have read an encyclopaedic amount of literature about insomnia, I have heard lullabies in thirteen different languages, I have tried lavender aromatherapy and temple massage techniques.

Only poets can heroically sacrifice the golden throne