The loss dealt to Bangladesh and its publishing industry this week will be unparalleled—at 12:59 am on Tuesday, June 22, Mohiuddin Ahmed, Emeritus Publisher and founder of University Press Limited (UPL), passed away after surviving Parkinson’s disease for 20 years.

When I began reading Homeland Elegies (Little, Brown and Company, 2020), all I knew about it was that it was a memoir; an account of the life of the author, Ayad Akhtar—a second-generation Muslim immigrant with Pakistani parents who migrated to America to further their careers as doctors.

Female empowerment is often seen as a luxury reserved for privileged societies—something no struggling community can think about. After all, we misapprehended women’s empowerment as an issue exclusively for women. Yet by making this mistake, struggling communities continue trying to climb out of poverty whilst carrying the deadweight of wasted potential—disenfranchised women.

Even though we moved out of our grandmother’s house in Dhaka more than a decade ago, my sister and I still associate the word “storm” with the smell of the unripe mangoes that the kalboishakhi would force down from the trees in her backyard. There are many other quirks we share, things that might seem insignificant to someone who was not a part of our lives back then. But to us, the house with its long corridors and leafy backyard, and a front yard that turned into a badminton court each winter, is nothing short of a wonderland, a place that nurtured us even as it introduced us to the harsher realities of life, a place that remains a living, breathing character in the many dreams and nightmares that we have.

Sufia Kamal’s is a name revered in nearly every household in the country, and not just because of the spontaneous literary genius that she possessed. She was simultaneously a poet, a feminist activist, and a cultural icon; all of these identities were in some way or other reflected in her literary works—comprising short stories, plays, novels, travelogues, and autobiography—which took her closer to touching the lives of a broader spectrum of people across the country.

I know it’s hard when you want to travel, but life, owing in no small part to COVID-19, has other plans. If you are anything like me, then you are probably avoiding spending too much time watching the news right now. One way I found to cope with these strange times is to escape into books, especially those that transport me to wonderful locations. Here are five such books to read if you miss travelling.

Last week, we marked the 10th year of my father’s death, on June 15th. Every year since we lost him, I would make it a point to post little stories about him from my childhood, on social media. I call them #memorydoodles. This year, while posting pictures and posts about my father, memories of Abbu – his bookshelf and the many books strewn all over our home – rushed in and I found myself remembering all the moments we shared around books.

In their latest offering, Sensing Bangladesh – A Children’s Guidebook to Art from Bangladesh, UK-based book publisher Bok Bok Books attempts to represent the cultural, linguistic, and literary heritage of Bangladesh through children’s books.

Shamsul Alam’s From Love Lane to the World: Tales of Travel & More (Sea Sands, 2021) is a selection of his magazine and newspaper articles, based on his many travels over the years.

Afsan Chowdhury’s Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and Bangladesh: The Quest for a State (1937-71), published in 2020 by Shrabon Prokashani, studies Bangabandhu in the context of the peasants’ resistance against colonialism and their quest for a state in South Asia.

Reading Sarah Hogle’s Twice Shy (GP Putnam’s Sons, 2021) is like biting into the cool freshness of summer fruits in the scorching Bangladeshi heat.

The books we recall today, Ami Birangona Bolchi (1994), Rising from the Ashes (2001), and The Spectral Wound (2015), are among the documentations which highlight women’s voices and their perspectives of 1971.

While DC and Marvel, the two big dogs of the comic book industry, have been reigning the superhero comic book genre for decades, the left-of-mainstream publisher Image Comics released issue 1 of Invincible in January 2003. Little did anyone realise back then that this new superhero series, among many already existing ones, would stand out, become a fan favorite, and run for 15 years straight!

We here at Daily Star Books enjoy nothing more than a good short story. Composed to be read in one or two sittings, the short story form lends much to the imagination of its makers, whose creativities, according to many a writer, are only emboldened by the strict word limits intrinsic to the form. The world of film, too, shares in this admiring, as can be seen in over a century’s worth of adaptations—some faithful, some not; some insipid, some inspired—that all have been fuelled by the few thousand words set first to page. In this list is a collection of 10 unmissable adaptations.

Sponsored by IFIC Bank, this year’s Kali O Kolom Torun Kabi O Lokhok Purushkar (Young Poets and Writers Award) will be awarded to Mozaffar Hossain under the “literature” category for his novel Timirjatra, Masud Parvez under the “research” category for Chalachitronama, Ijaz Ahmed Milon under the category of “liberation war literature” for 1971: Bidhasta Bariyay Shudhui Lash Ebong, and Ranjit Sarkar under the “children’s literature” category for School E Muktijuddho Hoyechilo. Submissions for the poetry category were not notable enough to merit awards, judges confirmed.

Not all books fulfil the purpose of exploring metaphors or offering a thrilling ending for readers to remember for ages to come. Some books are simply there to create a bridge between generations of readers, running for even as long as 70 years and more. Some books, like Anne Frank’s The Diary of a Young Girl, are written at a time when the world is in turmoil. She needed a space to express herself, to gather her thoughts and maybe, someday, pass these thoughts on to others, once the world went back to normal. Unfortunately, Anne along with her family were eventually captured and killed, except for her father Otto Frank, who ended up finding the book and publishing it. Little did she know that her Dutch expressions would be translated to English and many other languages, and touch millions of hearts around the world.

While the world might seem like a place only made for extroverts, who get ahead with the volume of their voices alone, Personal Branding (Odommo Prokash, 2021) is a book that is here to permanently lay that idea to rest. Authors Md Tajdin Hassan, Md Sohan Haidear, and Rafeed Elahi Chowdhury provide a meticulous blueprint for an aspiring professional to make themselves noticed.

On June 3, 2021, Bangladeshi-born British writer Tahmima Anam published her fifth book, The Startup Wife (Canongate, 2021), a novel about coding, entrepreneurship, human relationships, and finding one’s voice.

It is impossible to ascribe any one particular character to Soumitra Chaterjee, as he has immortalised several through his performances.

In the middle of nowhere, among the wide expanse of paddy fields stands a wee nursery—an oasis of sorts, a respite from the outside world.