CREATIVE NONFICTION / Our Eids and Puja in Azimpur

30 May 2026, 00:00 AM Books & Literature
In 1970s Azimpur, the two Eids and Durga Puja were the punctuation marks of our year—days when stairwells, verandas, and a single playground turned many flats into one home.

Interview / Writing what silence carries: Mohua Chinappa on memory, pain, and inheritance

Thorns in My Quilt (Rupa Publications India, 2024) unfolds through address rather than disclosure. Written as a series of letters to her father, Mohua Chinappa’s memoir traces memory not as a sequence of events, but as an emotional inheritance shaped by silence, expectation, and the subtle negotiations that govern family life.
News Report / From the ashes: Gaza’s first grassroots library rises amid genocide
12 April 2026, 21:43 PM
Two Palestinian writers, Omar Hamad and Ibrahim Massri, have been working since late 2025 to build a library in Gaza during the ongoing genocide. The Phoenix Library is located in the heart of Gaza City and, per a post from the library’s Twitter/X account, is fast approaching its official opening date despite the Gaza Strip and all of occupied Palestine still being subject to Israeli apartheid violence.
NEWS REPORT / Arundhati Roy’s Mother Mary Comes to Me secures 2026 NBCC Award, continues global recognition
28 March 2026, 17:07 PM
Celebrated author and activist Arundhati Roy’s 2025 memoir Mother Mary Comes to Me (Penguin, 2025) continues to solidify its place in the zeitgeist and its cultural impact well into 2026, with its recent win at this year’s US National Book Critics Circle (NBCC) Award in the Autobiography category.

WHAT WE’RE READING THIS WEEK

Akhteruzzaman Elias needs no introduction. Khoari is an anthology of four short stories by the prolific writer of novels like Chilekothar Shepai (1987) and Khwabnama (1996). In this collection, the writer explores not only universally resonant and time transcendent themes like sexuality, old age, lust, and death but also postcolonial ones like race, occupation, displacement, and sense of belonging.
17 September 2025, 18:00 PM

Is this the end of growth as we have known it?

The world only began to experience notable economic growth in the late 19th century. Even then, it was the reserve of heavily industrialised nations. Thanks to the mercantilist policies of Europe’s empires, this meant that territories like the Bengal weren’t merely prevented from industrialising, but deindustrialised.
17 September 2025, 18:00 PM

Exploring the modern concerns in ‘Homer’s epic’ in light of Nolan’s adaptation

My love for the Percy Jackson series transformed reading The Odyssey from an academic obligation into an act of curiosity.
17 September 2025, 18:00 PM

A collection of books by renowned writers you cannot read

Each year, one writer contributes a text that will remain unpublished and unread until 2114.
14 September 2025, 13:30 PM

The truth factory

By the year 2035, Dhaka forgets the scent of the Gulshan-Banani lake.
12 September 2025, 18:54 PM

Dhaka myths

I have become the smoke .In someone’s teacup at 8,.The quiet breeze that flickers a candle–.before the call to prayer..Dhaka, you burned me to ash.And tried to mold me like Hephaestus .As if I were your forged blade,.Your myth-woven metal..But stil
12 September 2025, 18:54 PM

Your hands shook the whole time

Winters feel less like winters, the sun burns on my fragile skin. December. Tell me it’s
12 September 2025, 18:54 PM

Standing firm against the establishment: Farewell Badruddin Umar

Always a voice against the ruling class, Badruddin Umar was a fierce critic of the post-1971 regime of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman.
11 September 2025, 13:30 PM

The Indosphere and its discontents

In the year 1025, a fleet of warships set sail from the Coromandel Coast of southern India on a mission of conquest.
10 September 2025, 18:00 PM

Abandon hope, all ye who enter grad school

If Dante Alighieri were a frustrated PhD student with a caffeine addiction and a strong disdain for university bureaucracy, he might have created Katabasis, as R.F. Kuang did.
10 September 2025, 18:00 PM

When dreams refuse to stay silent

The launch brought together literature, art, and reflection, marking the arrival of Breaking Dreams as a work that speaks both to individual lives and to the wider social realities of Bangladesh.
9 September 2025, 13:00 PM

'Da Vinci Code' author Dan Brown releases latest thriller

"The Secret of Secrets", which runs to nearly 700 pages in English, marks Brown's return eight years after his last novel, "Origin".
9 September 2025, 10:19 AM

The fire that has no shape

What do you carry in your heart’s bundle? A lineage?
5 September 2025, 18:59 PM

A visit before the journey

Before returning to Australia, I felt a quiet urgency to visit my elderly and ailing relatives in Dhaka. Not just a social obligation—it was something deeper, a whisper from within. I heard such visits were acts of virtue, but for me, it was more about connection, memory, and respect..A fe
5 September 2025, 18:59 PM

The dawn’s return

Long, long ago, when the world was younger, wiser, softer, when the animals were braver and the people were gentler, when art lived and music sailed, and the skies were a true, honest blue, there lived a man who loved a woman, and they lived in a little house they loved very much. How they met o
5 September 2025, 18:58 PM

No one taught her this

One of the memoir’s most striking elements is Westover’s refusal to paint her family in simple black and white
4 September 2025, 14:15 PM

The imperfect art of leaving

In a recent conversation I had with a well-regarded photographer about his longitudinal study on a subject, he talked about Sufism and the structure of the raagas in classical music where a single refrain being repeated was actually an inward search for deeper meaning.
3 September 2025, 18:01 PM

Bridging divides: Aruna Chakravarti’s journey through Bengal’s hidden narratives

"You have done an excellent job. People who know English tell me that your translations are better than the originals," said the late Sunil Gangopadhyay to Aruna Chakravarti on her translation of his writings.
3 September 2025, 18:01 PM

Mother, memory, and defiance: Inside Arundhati Roy’s new memoir

The memoir situates Roy’s personal story alongside her public life as an outspoken critic of state power, globalisation, and inequality.
31 August 2025, 12:30 PM

Sonnet of the riverbank: Remembering Al Mahmud, the poet

Some poets arrive like rain on parched soil—needing no defense, only recognition. Al Mahmud (1936–2019) was one of them. And yet, in the usual crookedness of history, we have found ourselves having to defend what should already have been canonised. There was a time—not long ago—when his name uns
29 August 2025, 19:49 PM
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