Books & Literature

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.

CREATIVE NONFICTION / The flavours of Eid and the memory of home

30 May 2026, 00:00 AM Books & Literature

The Shelf / Chand raat in Dhaka through the eyes of literary characters

27 May 2026, 23:33 PM The Shelf

THE SHELF / The knife is always ready 5 books for the season of sacrifice

27 May 2026, 00:00 AM Books & Literature

BOOK REVIEW: POETRY / Pias Majid: The poet of the moonlight conference

27 May 2026, 00:00 AM Books & Literature

Nazrul cannot be contained within a singular frame

25 May 2026, 09:00 AM Culture

Essay / Anti-colonial resistance in Kazi Nazrul Islam’s essays

23 May 2026, 00:00 AM Essay

Essay / Raja Rammohun Roy: An architect of Asian cosmopolitan modernity

23 May 2026, 00:00 AM Essay

Alt-lit / What you can’t remember will definitely hurt you: Antimemes and qntm’s Antimemetics SCP saga

21 May 2026, 00:00 AM ⁠⁠Features

Reviews

Book Review: Nonfiction / The human texture of July

Adnan M. S. Fakir

Book Review: Nonfiction / A book on education, and a rare moment of hope

Shahedul Azam

Book Review: Nonfiction / Fara Dabhoiwala’s history misses the one thing that truly matters

Najmus Sakib

Book Review: Fiction / Agency, identity, and the rewriting of Medusa

Jonah Kent Richards

Book review: Fiction / Aruna Chakravarti’s ghosts don’t just scare, they remember

Mitali Chakravarty

BOOK REVIEW: FICTION / A wintry account of the human experience

Shounak Reza

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

Namrata

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.

REFLECTIONS / The fading appeal of the Eid magazine

Iftehaz Yeasir Iftee

EDITORIAL / Why read?

Nazia Manzoor

INTERVIEW / Reclaiming the unwritten: Kanika Gupta on colonialism, embodiment, and the art of remembering

Namrata

REFLECTIONS / Moon, memory, manifesto: A personal, lyrical essay on Atrai

Azfar Hussain

⁠⁠News

Interview / Faith, patriarchy, and resistance: Banu Mushtaq on ‘Heart Lamp’

7 May 2026, 00:00 AM

News Report / Illuminating the past and the present: The 2026 Pulitzer Prize winners announced

5 May 2026, 21:50 PM

Event Report / Poetry collection Adivasi Premikar Mukh: The Portrait of an Adivasi Beloved launched at Bangla Academy

19 May 2026, 14:26 PM

Event Report / Two-day literary memorial and discussion event held at Bengal Shilpalay

Star Books Report

17 May 2026, 17:16 PM

Event Report / Secrets, silences, and storytelling: Inside the launch of Razia Sultana’s new anthology

Kazi Raidah Afia Nusaiba

14 May 2026, 00:00 AM

Event Report / DEML-NSU hosts closing ceremony for first cohort of its Creative Writing Certificate Course

27 April 2026, 22:43 PM

Event Report / DEH-ULAB hosts Earth Day 2026 talk on climate fiction and water issues

22 April 2026, 18:41 PM

News Report / From the ashes: Gaza’s first grassroots library rises amid genocide

Star Books Report

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 / “Six books that reverberate with history, humanity, heartbreak, and hope”: 2026 International Booker Prize shortlist announced

Arwin Shams Siddiquee

2 April 2026, 17:32 PM

NEWS REPORT / Arundhati Roy’s Mother Mary Comes to Me secures 2026 NBCC Award, continues global recognition

Star Books Report

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.

Atopor Shabdayan becomes Bangladesh partner of global poetry platform Lyrikline

22 March 2026, 10:37 AM

Editor’s pick

Creative nonfiction / Growing up with a new nation: The Dhaka we once knew

Ahmed Ahsanuzzaman

28 March 2026, 03:42 AM Creative non-fiction

Children of 1972–73 came of age alongside Bangladesh itself. In Azimpur’s close‑knit colony, a telephone became a neighbourhood lifeline, television was a shared ritual, and the Buriganga was our afternoon escape.

FLASH FICTION / Chand raat at Mohakhali

Iftehaz Yeasir Iftee

20 March 2026, 20:20 PM

Essay / The Cosmere is getting adapted: Here is where to start reading

Sajal Hossain Dhaly

14 March 2026, 21:02 PM

CREATIVE NONFICTION / Sweetened ice and other lessons in kindness

Anindita Roy

14 March 2026, 01:59 AM

Essay / A meaningless world: Sartre, Camus, Waliullah, and Badal Sircar

Mostofa Sarwar

14 March 2026, 01:48 AM

CREATIVE NONFICTION / The devil wears Maria B

Tashfia Ahmed

7 March 2026, 02:13 AM

The shelf / 6 Books to contextualise the present conflict in the Gulf

Arwin Shams Siddiquee Mahmuda Emdad

1 March 2026, 21:07 PM

ESSAY / Romance, radical hope, and the modern happily ever after

Shababa Iqbal

27 February 2026, 00:05 AM

The Birangona in poetry and conversation

Using a Fulbright fellowship, Tarfia decided to come to Bangladesh to research the war and interview the women whom the Bangladesh government, in 1972, titled Birangona (war heroines). These interviews resulted in 'Seam' (Southern Illinois University Press, 2014).

25 March 2023, 08:53 AM

5 books about 25th March genocide and the aftermath

Genocide Day is an important day in our national history; the day ‘Operation Searchlight’ was executed. Here are 5 books about the massacre of 25th March and the aftermath that every Bengali should read.

25 March 2023, 04:03 AM

A night poem

my eyes can barely take the weight of sleep/ now/ now that you are wording sentences on wars

24 March 2023, 18:00 PM

Take note: How note-taking can come in handy when you’re short of inspiration

Watch this print space for the Talespeople's weekly reflections on creative writing.

24 March 2023, 18:00 PM

War and peace and poetry and poets

How can you talk about peace without taking into account war? Both are subjects not only of Tolstoy’s great novel but also of the two founding epic poems of Greek as well as Indian literature.

24 March 2023, 18:00 PM

Cement Swans

On moonlit nights when the perfume of the roses thickened the air, I was in a trance, an ecstasy of body and mind. The beauty of the night has held an allure for me my whole life.

24 March 2023, 15:00 PM

‘Begin’: Sehri Tales selections, Day 1

The top selections in poetry, flash fiction and artwork for Day 1 of the Sehri Tales challenge; prompt: Begin

24 March 2023, 13:00 PM

Everything you need to know about Sehri Tales 2023

Sehri Tales has established itself as a Ramadan tradition for writers in Bangladesh. The rules are simple: each night at midnight, for the entire month leading up to Eid-ul-Fitr, Ahmad shares a prompt, and participants have until 6 AM (sunrise) to write original poetry, flash fiction, or create unique art, and then share it online with the hashtag #sehritales2023.

24 March 2023, 09:18 AM

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