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.

Words fall short to describe Kamla Bhasin: how does one begin to describe a force of nature like her? Perhaps the simplest way to do so is with the word ‘love’. Kamla was many things to many people—most famous for her fierce feminism, activism, and work in development, rights, peace and justice. However, at the core of it, I believe, Kamla embodied love.

A hawker in Jhenidah, with his own hard-earned money, has established a self-made library at his house in College Para area under Kaliganj municipality. 

Fifteen pages into Ali Smith’s Autumn—the first installment of the Seasonal Quartet, we are introduced to the protagonist (to the extent they exist in her books), Elisabeth.

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.

Oorja, as her name suggests, is a bright young girl who is the main protagonist of the story. The novel begins with her travelling back to India after her mother’s demise. She reaches home only to find her father missing. The rest of the book is a journey of love, healing, and rediscovery of her own self. 

Sufibad O Sufider Shorup Shondhaney (‘In search of the nature of Sufism and Sufis’), written by Syed Rezaul Karim and published in 2020 by Bangla Academy, is a welcome addition to the meager collection of books written in Bangla on Sufism.

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.

The 2021 Booker Prize shortlist was revealed on September 15, with six of the previously announced 13-novel longlist making the cut. Each of the six authors are to receive GBP 2,500, while the winner, to be announced on November 3 at the BBC Radio Theatre, will receive GBP 5,000. Notably, and much like 2020’s competition, only one British author is named in the shortlist.

Dr Anand Bikash Chakma, Associate Professor at the department of History, Chittagong University, launched his book, Carpus Mahal Theke Shanti Chukti: Parbotto Chattogram-e Rashtrio Nitir Itihash (University Press Limited, 2021), at a virtual programme organised by UPL on September 9, 2021. 

In the 1700s, there lived an Italian artist, architect, and archaeologist who saw in the world far more than what was in it. Giovanni Battista Piranesi captured his world, among other things, through prints: the most famous of which are the Views, an imitation of the classical remains of Rome, and the imaginary renditions of the Prisons.

The annual competition, which has been hailed as “India's most valuable literature prize”, offers INR 2,500,000 (USD 35,000) to its winner for distinguished work of fiction by an Indian writer working in or translated to English.

Zubaan Books has released a hardback edition of Inherited Memories: Third Generation Perspectives on Partition in the East, concerning the still-felt ramifications of the 1947 partition.

From August 2021, Daily Star Books was excited to have joined Bookcentric’s monthly reading challenge, which invites readers to read and review books following each month’s designated theme. Under August’s theme of books with nautical themes, here is what our readers read—and reviewed—last month!

Originally published as a series of short stories in the 1940s, the Foundation series—expanded later with a string of prequels and sequels—became Asimov’s greatest contribution to the genre and remains, to this day, one of the greatest reads for any SF connoisseur. 

These 6 tips on how to care for your books can help extend the life of your books a little longer.

In Shadow City: A Woman Walks Kabul (Vintage Books, 2019), Khan delineates a personal map of Kabul, taking the reader through the “shadow city” that can be found in its still-standing monuments, libraries, pleasure gardens, theatres, shopping malls, wedding halls and graveyards.

Samai Haider’s Tilmund’s Travel Tales (Guba Books, 2020) is a story about a little boy named Tilmund who has a great wish to follow in his grandfather’s footsteps and travel the world.

Henry Kissinger is infamous in Bangladesh for allegedly terming the newly-independent country a “bottomless basket”, but this statement appears to be the least of his crimes against the people of Bangladesh.

Whereabouts (Penguin India, 2021) is Jhumpa Lahiri’s third novel, published originally as Dove mi trovo (2018) in Italian and translated to English by the author herself, as she did with her work of nonfiction, In Other Words (2015).