Longlist Announced For The Dsc Prize For South Asian Literature 2017

The much anticipated longlist for the US $25,000 DSC Prize for South Asian Literature 2017 was announced today by eminent feminist writer and publisher Ritu Menon, who is the chair of the jury panel for the distinguished prize.
18 August 2017, 18:00 PM

Ocean of Sorrow

When I picked up Ocean of Sorrow, I didn't know what to expect. My father had bought the book from Bangla Academy in our recent trip to Dhaka.
18 August 2017, 18:00 PM

From The Pain of a Hollow Man (Rikter Bedan)

Oh, Lord! Is this your way of freeing me from the possible entanglement of relationships? I pondered and wondered; my eyes filled with tears. The joy of such freedom is full of intense pain too.
18 August 2017, 18:00 PM

August is the Cruellest Month

Shamsur Rahman's “Song of Electra,” is a poem about a daughter lamenting her father's inopportune death. He is really none other than the father of our nation who was snatched from us one dark August night in 1975.
18 August 2017, 18:00 PM

To Be is to Be towards Death: Tagore's Last Poems

While reading some of Tagore's last poems from Shesh Lekha—translated by Kaiser Haq and Fakrul Alam and printed in The Essential Tagore— I could not stop relating Tagore's views on death with the ontology of Being and nothingness.
18 August 2017, 18:00 PM

Now that It's August Cry out in Sorrow

Now that it's August, cry out in sorrow Bengalis!
18 August 2017, 18:00 PM

On Retiring

Six professors of the Department of English of Dhaka University retired recently and were given a farewell on the occasion. The following poems were penned for this occasion.
11 August 2017, 18:00 PM

Orange Man from Netrakona

Besides daily errands, Aklima Begum had barely been outside her Dhanmondi apartment in months. At first there seemed no plan to it.
11 August 2017, 18:00 PM

Silent but Near

It is true that Rashid Karim Gholam Murshed, aka Rashid Karim, surrendered his physical life to death. But it is not true that he gave
11 August 2017, 18:00 PM

Fictionalizing an Unhappy World

“A single book could contain so much of everything, so much anguish and joy and love and war and death and life, so much of being
11 August 2017, 18:00 PM

Sparring with Spirits!

Poetry can be defined in a thousand ways, and yet its essence will continue to elude us. A poem might be someone's imagination
11 August 2017, 18:00 PM

On Art and the Artiste –

Twenty years ago—back in 1997—I was a first-year undergraduate studying English literature at the University of Dhaka when
11 August 2017, 18:00 PM

The untold story of the home front

“In love we find out who we want to be. In war we find out who we are.”
9 August 2017, 18:00 PM

Rabindranath’s 76th death anniversary being observed

The 76th death anniversary of the Bard of Bengal Rabindranath Tagore is observed.
6 August 2017, 06:26 AM

Ms Bunny Sen

been buggering around this goddamn city
4 August 2017, 18:00 PM

City Beloved

Humayun Ahmed's Tomader Ei Nagar-e projects Dhaka--our beloved city!--with all her beauties, flaws, eccentricities, and mysteries
4 August 2017, 18:00 PM

Literature and the City

Urban spaces have deeply contradictory existences in our imagination. We love cities and the goodies they offer; we also hate them
4 August 2017, 18:00 PM

Two Idiots in Dhaka

That building over there—that is the High Court!
4 August 2017, 18:00 PM

Dhaka Landing

Dhaka was still slumbering. The sun was yet to come up, and the silence spread over the pitched road was yet to be swallowed by the
4 August 2017, 18:00 PM

From Dhaka and Dirty Dialectics:

But, Dhaka, I hear your sepoy in the attic say, as he fashions his life after the size and shape of a solitude more tenacious than my
4 August 2017, 18:00 PM