FLASH FICTION / Chand raat at Mohakhali

After half a century from where we began, Daily Star Books will spend all of this year—the 50th year of Bangladesh—revisiting, celebrating, and analyzing some of the books that played pivotal roles in documenting the Liberation War of 1971 and the birth of this nation.

Language and education are prime markers in identifying one’s participation in society and politics. Having just commemorated the International Mother Language Day on February 21, that too on the verge of our nation’s silver jubilee, it is perhaps a unique opportunity for us to question, reflect, and make changes to our politics on language, education, and social identities.

Vivek Oji, the titular character in Akwaeke Emezi’s second novel, is dead; this is stated in the title, the first line, and throughout the book. However, in every chapter, Vivek keeps coming alive, images of him rising out of the text’s surface only to dissolve again.

Olpo Kothar Golpo Gaan includes 200 of these iconic songs.

On February 22, 2021, The British Library hosted “Sultana’s Dream: Contemporary Fiction of Bangladeshi Origin”, a free virtual session on Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain’s feminist utopian novella.

Fuleshwary Priyanandini recounted the stories she was told by her mother.

We reached the crematorium on the riverside that takes a mischievous turn near a local market. The hushed night was deep and dark.

The intellectual killing had left the country with severe brain injury in December 1971. We were devoid of cultural, moral and professional leadership all at once.

For anyone looking to immerse themself in the literary culture of Bangladesh, Professor Razia Khan Amin’s name and presence are unavoidable.

The natural and political world bloom to life in the pages of Ali Smith’s Spring (Penguin Random House, 2019), the brilliant third installment in her seasonal quartet of books.

I stumbled across a short story written by Aoko Matsuda called “Quite a Catch” in the Wasafiri literary magazine last month.

To write of Radiohead’s 2000 album Kid A is to add to the palimpsest of its criticism, at this stage a glowing, impossibly effusive set of texts.

Be it the classical enemies-to-lovers trope, the fake dating trope or the infamous, and endlessly intoxicating, love triangle, the stories below have covered it all.

As the guitar strikes And we enjoy its dulcet tunes, My mind wanders someplace else, slowly jamming.

The police flagged down our driver, who ran a red light on the flyover one cloudy December afternoon. “Didn’t you see the STOP sign?” one of them yelled, as soon as the driver rolled down the window.

You are stuffing gunpowder into the silent cannon All by yourself. Now that the winter is over

A few months ago, during the height of the pandemic, my teacher and mentor who is now a UGC professor called me up one morning to convey to me that he has finally finished reading Akhtaruzzaman Elias’ novel Khwabnama.

Popular manga, biographies, children’s books, and latest international releases across genres are expected to become available at the store within two weeks of publication.

In this second installment, we talk about Purbo Banglar Bhasha Andolon O Totkaleen Rajneeti (The Language Movement of Bengal and Contemporary Politics), in which author and historian Badruddin Umar explains the cultural, economic, and historical context behind the Bangla language movement of 1952.

Similar to the mimicry of life by art, sometimes a book in our hands can acutely imitate the arcs of the love story we are in, ourselves—like the time a ghost lover stole a paperback Frankenstein from the neighborhood café as a last minute birthday gift for me, while our alliance reeked of haunted loneliness and painful assertions, or when one of my friends, a doctor by day and an avid reader by night, spoke about his first encounter with Harry Potter and the “cute, sweet girl across the hall.”