Masud Rana, the faulty hero

He’s mysterious. He’s charming. He’s strong, skilled and agile. He makes you think of James Bond, or perhaps Jason Bourne.
1 July 2020, 18:00 PM

#DADMAN

Dadman
24 June 2020, 18:00 PM

An intellectual at his finest

Aaj O Agamikaal: Nirbachito Shakkhatkar (Daily Star Books, 2020) by Professor Serajul Islam Choudhury and edited by Emran Mahfuz, a young
24 June 2020, 18:00 PM

Into the nuances of history: Sudeep Chakravarti unpacks the Battle of Plassey

Sudeep Chakravarti is an eminent commentator and author whose narrative non-fiction and fiction have been translated into Bangla, Hindi, Spanish, Portuguese, German and more. In January 2020, his book—Plassey:
24 June 2020, 18:00 PM

GREAT DADS IN LITERATURE

Social media brimmed with photos and stories of dads for Father's Day this past Sunday, June 21. But who were some of the fathers we have loved reading in books? The DS Books team chimed in with their favourites.
24 June 2020, 18:00 PM

Notes on a shared history

In the weeks following George Floyd’s death—murdered in Minneapolis by a police officer who knelt on his neck for eight minutes and 46 seconds—the conversation around diversity and inclusion has returned to the forefront,
17 June 2020, 18:00 PM

Alex Vitale’s book asks: why do we need the police?

In The End of Policing (2017), professor of sociology Alex S Vitale journeys back to its origins to remind us that the idea behind the creation of the first police force in 1829 England was not so much to fight crime, but to “manage disorder and protect the propertied classes from the rabble.”
17 June 2020, 18:00 PM

‘Masud Rana’goes to court

Among the most iconic characters of popular Bangla literature, Masud Rana’s name is synonymous with that of its author, Kazi Anwar Hossain.
17 June 2020, 18:00 PM

Worth a read this month

THE NEXT GREAT MIGRATION
10 June 2020, 18:00 PM

William Dalrymple's 'The Anarchy': Risky business and the company that never left

The book starts with the origin of the word loot, a slang word for plunder. It was imported into the English language while the East India Company and its officers pillaged—for more than 100 years—Bengal, Mysore,
10 June 2020, 18:00 PM

Wild Wild East

In the 1950s, giddy with the glory of a blood-soaked independence, Bollywood churned out films that were high on “Nehruvian nationalism”.
10 June 2020, 18:00 PM

Editor’s Note

Two kinds of spaces are shrinking around us as we speak—one for books and creativity, as it starves from a lack of revenues, and another for our physical existence in the public sphere, caused by the coronavirus.
3 June 2020, 18:00 PM

The absence of climate change in fiction and other great derangements

The book explores our inability at the level of literature, history, and politics to grasp the scale and violence of climate change.
3 June 2020, 18:00 PM

Recommended reading for World Environment Day

As Abida Chowdhury addresses in her piece on The Great Derangement, narratives that engage with the natural world are scarce. Here are some books, both
3 June 2020, 18:00 PM

Isolation is personal and political in Olivia Laing’s ‘The Lonely City’

Ever since social isolation began in an attempt to contain the Corona virus, the internet has flooded with references to the American realist painter Edward Hopper, especially his iconic work, ‘Nighthawks’ (1942).
3 June 2020, 18:00 PM

Original vs Derivative: Reading Syed Shamsul Haque’s Ballad of Our Hero Bangabandhu in Translation

To aptly celebrate the Birth-Centenary of the Father of the Nation Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, one initiative, among others, by Bangla Academy has been to publish Syed Shamsul Haque’s Ballad of our Hero Bangabandhu, together with its translation in English, as part of its grand project named “Birth-Centenary Publications of the Father of the Nation Bangabadhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman.
13 March 2020, 18:00 PM

NEW BOOK

Rashida Sultana’s much-admired novel, Shada Beralera has been translated into English as The White Cats, recently.
6 March 2020, 18:00 PM

Language Attitude Anxiety and Remedial Propositions: A New Approach to ELT

Asantha U Attanayake’s first exchanges with me were over e-mail. She was travelling across the Subcontinent to collect and develop materials for her forthcoming book.
6 March 2020, 18:00 PM

Sweet Dreams and Distressing Nightmares

Those haunting lyrics of the British band Eurythmics, “Sweet dreams are made of this…”, followed intermittently by “…everybody is looking for something…”, and “…some of them want to use you…” fairly accurately encapsulate the theme of the dozen short stories that make up Rummana Chowdhury’s slim volume,
28 February 2020, 18:00 PM

History Animated through Words

No matter Lawrence Durrel defines history as “an endless repetition of the wrong way of living,” we must study it closely for gaining insights into our very own existence and setting our future course of actions.
28 February 2020, 18:00 PM