BOOK REVIEW: NONFICTION / Sports journalism and Bangladesh
9 August 2023, 18:00 PM
Books & Literature
'Independence': A painfully poignant Partition story
22 June 2023, 08:16 AM
Books & Literature
Professing criticism: On Naeem Mohaiemen's new book of essays
8 June 2023, 06:59 AM
Books & Literature
Flesh in ruins
18 May 2023, 07:33 AM
Books & Literature
BOOK REVIEW: FICTION / Family of feelings: Iffat Nawaz's 'Shurjo's Clan'
26 January 2023, 10:20 AM
Books & Literature
BOOK REVIEW: FICTION / The Bhawal story through women’s voices in Aruna Chakravarti’s ‘The Mendicant Prince’
8 December 2022, 04:00 AM
Books & Literature
BOOK REVIEW: NONFICTION / Andy Warhol & Truman Capote talk out their anxieties
1 December 2022, 12:00 PM
Books & Literature
BOOK REVIEW: NONFICTION / Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose: A relative’s perspective on an enigmatic hero
17 November 2022, 05:46 AM
Books & Literature
Nothing matters, but Albert Camus’s 'The Stranger' does
7 November 2022, 11:42 AM
Books & Literature
BOOK REVIEW: FICTION / Life in modern Dhaka as portrayed in 'A Strange Coincidence and Other Stories'
3 November 2022, 12:00 PM
Books & Literature
Farewell my friend: A review of 'Babu Bangladesh!'
The first 20 years of Babu's life are entwined with the stories surrounding the Sangsad Bhaban. The description of the building is an ode in prose form, vibrating with emotion, bringing the building to life.
2 August 2019, 18:00 PM
On Becoming
Do not judge a book by its cover; notwithstanding the glamorous becoming photo profile that graces this book. Do judge a book by its title. A more appropriate book title is hard to conceive of. Becoming in a single word summarises the passage of the extra-ordinary
19 July 2019, 18:00 PM
Of Identity, Love, and Holy War: A Review of The Runaways
Rightfully so, The Guardian calls it a timely novel. In The Runaways, the discourse on radicalization is fanned by the converging lives of three different young people as we, the readers, are flown from dusty, noise-filled, engine-breathing Karachi, gloomy Portsmouth, and rustic Varanasi to rubble-filled, war stricken Syria and Mosul.
5 July 2019, 18:00 PM
A Bibliophile’s Review of Bargain Buys
Phobia and mania remain inexplicably internalised conditions. Such was my dilemma as I stood at the crossroad one Saturday morning waiting for my friend as she undertook her Saturday errands in Purley, Croydon, outside London. To my left, stood the Cat Protection
28 June 2019, 18:00 PM
Is the Man Who is Tall Happy?
Is the Man Who is Tall Happy is pretty to look at. It is an animated documentary laying out a meandering conversation between two men (as of now, also free to stream on Youtube). We would call it an adda. The first is the interviewer himself, Michael Gondry, a
28 June 2019, 18:00 PM
Wild Flowers in a Busy Street: A Review of Anabhyaser Dine
When I started reading Anabhyaser Dine (Unaccustomed Days), I did not know much about the author but that also meant I was free from any preconceived image about the writer and in no obligation to subscribe to a preconceived notion.
14 June 2019, 18:00 PM
On Intimations of Ghalib: Translations from the Urdu
Mirza Asadullah Beg Khan (1797 – 1869), popularly known by his takhallus (pen name) Ghalib (conqueror), makes it difficult for writers to sum him up easily or definitively. He himself would probably have taken great and impish delight in that knowledge. In one of his ghazals he suggests (Shahid Alam
7 June 2019, 18:00 PM
Truth Stranger than Fiction!
Imagine a Japanese man in Dhaka in the first decade of the twentieth century bent on being employed in the town and ending up marrying a Bengali Brahmo woman, the daughter of a soap factory owner, who has offered him a job. Think of the woman later going to a village near Nagoya with her husband
31 May 2019, 18:00 PM
It’s All Relative: Relative Truths
However trite it may seem at first glance to call a book “It’s All Relative,” more layers are revealed on further examination of this collection of stories published by Bengal Publicationss. The title is perhaps an allusion to how stories bounce off each other, morphing into something different
24 May 2019, 18:00 PM
A Bibliophile’s Review of Bargain Buys: The Life and Times of Hercule Poirot
The Queen of detective fiction (1890-1976) was in 1971 bestowed the title - Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire for her contribution to literature by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II. As with the British reigning monarch, Agatha Christie’s reign continues uninterrupted.
17 May 2019, 18:00 PM
Human, All too Human!
For anyone harboring misgivings about Rabindranath Tagore but doing so with an open mind, as well as anyone who treasures his works but is realistic enough to know that though superhuman in some ways, he was human—all too human!—this is a must read book. Certainly, I found it unputdownable.
10 May 2019, 18:00 PM
Dina Begum and her Brick Lane cookbook
For some reason, at least in England, Bangladeshi curry houses took everyone by storm in the ‘70s. And Dina Begum proves once more that it was largely because of the unique culinary prowess of the Bengali immigrants, attempting to escape the torment of the Liberation War.
6 May 2019, 18:00 PM
The Burden of Miracle in Poonachi: or the Story of a Black Goat
Perumal Murugan, the Tamil writer who rose to fame with self-declaration of his death as an author following protests by the Right wing against his writing, has resurrected with a forceful new novel, Poonachi.
3 May 2019, 18:00 PM
Azfar Hussain’s Dorshonakkhyan: Materialist Philosophy
In Hegelian philosophy, the dialectical relation between appearance and reality is an important relationship. Marx brought this
26 April 2019, 18:00 PM
An Anchorite’s Call to Reread Tagore
Tagore is almost a century-old fixation with the Bengali-speaking world. A continual sprightly stream of books, writings and speeches
19 April 2019, 18:00 PM
Ek Kishorir Juddhajatra : A Painful Tale Told Spontaneously
It’s the tale of a teenage girl’s reminiscence of her journey from home country to a neighbouring country to take refuge during the devastating war of liberation in the year 1971, told by herself at the age of sixty.
29 March 2019, 18:00 PM
BANGABANDHU AND BANGLADESH: Correcting Contrives and Cunning Corridors
Lamartine — that mediocre poet but cunning politician in France during the revolutions of 1848 — once remarked that history is a trick that we, the living, play upon the dead.
29 March 2019, 18:00 PM
Dreams & Shadows: Perspectives on Multifarious Issues
“When white people commit acts of terrorism, we term them mentally ill. When governments commit acts of war and terrorism, we call it Foreign Policy. When a Muslim commits an act of terror, we call it terrorism.
15 March 2019, 18:00 PM
Patna Blues: Travails of a Minority Community
An enjoyable read, Abdullah Khan's debut novel, Patna Blues is a thought-provoking and moving work as well. It is a book mostly
1 March 2019, 18:00 PM
Ikrimikri- Enchanting kids with its colourful world of books
Ikrimikri is a publication of books that deliver heartwarming stories and dazzling illustrations. The illustrations are striking enough to make any adult want to keep the books for themselves.
27 February 2019, 18:00 PM