FLASH FICTION / Chand raat at Mohakhali

Winter was slowly taking off, with the February breeze following through, with the falling of the Debdaru leaves, with the advent of a new season.

Sometimes tears flow like rain for cakes that 

Nobody was around in the grey end of a Sunday. I strolled past the deserted park; the swings and slide failed to evoke the joy of old. The park looked cold, sequestered, and threatening in the dim light. It was strange and eerie to see not a soul there!

In his five-decade long career as a teacher of the English department at Dhaka University and at other institutions and as a scholar, Professor Fakrul Alam has had countless grateful students and admiring readers of his scholarly works that are not merely scholarly in a literary sense but are also personal and public.

Edited by Kudret Bulbul, a professor of Political Science and Public Administration at Ankara Yildirim Beyazit University, Turkey, Md Nazmul Islam,

Too often, the representation of Muslims in arts and culture has been tainted by the shadow of “extremism”.

In “Mother’s Milk”, a short story by Tahmima Anam which appears in Our Many Longings: Contemporary Short Fiction from Bangladesh (Dhauli Books, 2021), an unnamed narrator gives us brief snatches of her life as she attempts to endure…something. One can’t really call it an incident; it is, seemingly, more a state of being that requires her to keep joy at bay. Consciously, deliberately.

In a book launch held at the capital’s Bengal Shilpalay today, Gyantapas Abdur Razzaq Foundation and University Press Limited held a discussion session on Professor Razzaq’s Political Parties in India, his 1950 PhD thesis for the London School of Economics, published now for the first time in book form. 

Pushing the glass door open, Anita heaves a sigh of relief as she leaves the office for lunch. The sun is blazing down outside. Sometimes this place feels like a gold cage.

Come dawn, I am a daughter Sweet Obedient Caring

It was in Kabul, Afghanistan, on 24th December, 1972, when suddenly in the late afternoon the first snow flurries of the season began.

On a particularly slow day, all I have to do is sit down with a Nonte-Phonte comic book, and my troubles will lay forgotten to one side. I imagine it’s the same for most people who are fans of Narayan Debnath and his fictional characters from the small town of Paschimpara, West Bengal.

A designer and illustrator whose work focuses on human rights, feminism, and South Asian identity, Pakistani artist Shehzil Malik has just created an artwork based on Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain's novella Sultana's Dream (1905).

What comes to your mind when you encounter a graphic novel called Shapod Shoney (Graphic Bangla, 2021), which translates to ‘Along with the Beast’, the cover art showing a man holding a rifle under the dark sky?

A designer and illustrator whose work focuses on human rights, feminism, and South Asian identity, Malik has just created an artwork based on Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain’s novella Sultana’s Dream (1905), which imagines a feminist utopia where women dominate the world of science, labour, and their homes. 

Logo Land  (Lecturis, 2021), a new book by Bangladeshi author Amit Biswas, takes a look at the origin and meaning of logos, exploring the depths of shapes, colours, and forms in the municipality logos in the Netherlands. 

Far away from the crowd, far from the glaring chaos; out of the blaring car horns,  out of the shrieks of loneliness, out of all the madness that surrounds; Out of the city, out of the cacophony I chose to go and find solace.

You thought Time would play thumri while in the outskirts of desire

The most naïve boy of Dhabaldhola village had been murdered. The decapitated body lay on the demarcation line between the Bangari field and the Taro crop-field.

A week or two ago, I came across an article by Hassan Munhamanna on Daily Star Books in which he talked about his struggles with reading books in their entirety.