Tens of thousands of men sailed across the ocean to a land they’d never before heard the name of. They fought long and hard, in the world’s

When I was in 9th grade, a friend introduced me to the works of director Lars von Trier, starting with the film Dogville (2003). I’d never seen a feature film play out so well, in such intensity, with nothing but a largely empty sound stage for a film set.

Bright and cold on a winter afternoon, in the hours leading up to lunch, the kitchen of a Bengali family sizzles with tension. Refrigerated meat is thawed and spices are crushed and pestled.

I stood before the door of the house where my grandmother once lived. Age and infirmity had jaded what might have once been a proper door.

Shutters clicked away. Flashes dazzled eyes. News reporters jostled with each other to hold out their mikes as far as their arms allowed. Busy fingers gripped their ballpoints tighter.

When it comes to book reviews, I have found an interesting paradox—the better a book is, the easier it becomes to write about.

Literary historian David Damrosch’s travails with World Literature are charted most often by those within academia. During the Covid-19 inertia

Travis Dandro’s King of King Court: A Memoir (Drawn & Quarterly, 2019) is a large, dense book that reads light and fast. The coming of age story is packed with the raw emotional power of the author’s traumatic childhood.

About this book, I’d like to speak simply. Because Nabil Rahman’s Water Bodies (Nokta/ Boobook, 2020) speaks simply too, without frills or embellishment.

Year 2060: I was a lonely kid. Sometimes I felt as if I lived my whole life alone. There were different people here and there, flittering in and out, at the intersection where our lives crossed, before the roads untangled and moved apart.

I think I’ve always loved mathematics in my own ways.

At some point in time, we decided cynicism was synonymous with intelligence and wisdom. We praised cynics for their realism and scoffed at those who held onto fairy tales.

The 40 poems and photographs of wooden sculptors in Water Bodies reflect poet-artist Nabil Rahman’s experiences with art, immigration, intergenerational trauma, artificial intelligence, spirituality, and more.

Alice’s Adventures in the Wonderland (1865)

As the mangy fingers of fascism grew out of the copper earth,

Maybe you forgot, or dementia possessed you before our union—how else could you keep aloof from your soul, your other soul, your eupnoea?

Hajari Biswas was sitting leisurely in his spice-shop. It was around noon and the market price of spices was not going well. There were not too many buyers even though one could detect quite a few foreigners in the market. Hajari was fanning himself with a palm leaf and was dozing off. Suddenly, he woke up at the sound of a familiar voice.

As a tiny five-year old in the ’80s, I first discovered and liberated an Archie comic from a teenage cousin the way oil rich countries are liberated: by force. I used superior tactics of crying, pleading, whining and bargaining.

Two strange events took place in November 2016; Donald Trump was inaugurated as the 48th President of the United States, and George Orwell’s dystopian classic, 1984, suddenly became a best seller again.

I picked up this book while trying to find a good therapist in this dreary land.