I separate the bleeding stars

Gulshan Market Two has not changed much over the last three decades. Surrounding three sides of an open parking lot, it is a square, U-block construction, with a colonnade veranda running along the front of each shop. Some of the shops are new, but most are what they had been when Rita was a teenager.

“And brown for my hair,” muttered Mustafa to himself. He was engaged in his favorite pastime surrounded by a splendid array of multi-colored play dough.

Ms Banalata Sen is mentioned thrice, at the end of each 6-line stanza, and each time the effect, in the context of the stanza’s affective and ideational development, is climactic.

After six months of reading 151 books longlisted into 11, narrowed down further to six, the Booker Prize judges on October 14 announced this year’s winner—the “best novel” produced in English in the UK and Ireland (regardless of the author’s nationality) over the past one year.

What is Barishal known by? One hundred years back, the unfailing answer was “rice and river.” Half a century ago, the answer might have been a political name- Sher-e-Bangla A. K. Fazlul Huq.

The process of reading is consummated in rereading. It is sure to deepen and broaden our understanding of the work and its author, and quite possibly of ourselves as well.

Now late at night you have a bed

Jibanananda Das is probably one of the most read and yet the most neglected poets of Bengal. There is indeed a dearth of critical reading of his work, too.

Jibanananda Das (1899-1954) is widely regarded as one of the greatest poets in the Bengali language. His poetry in particular has already made possible a staggering range of interpretive adventures and hermeneutic excavations, although he wrote 21 novels and 110 short stories that were discovered after his death.

Would a few doors remain closed?

Amazon burns Each flame licks a life

“I’m doing what I feel like doing. What’s that to you?” Aslam retorted. He opened the door and said, “Like mother, like daughter. Get lost.”

They have given me a grilled piece of chicken and a naan with the face of moon on a plate. The grilled chicken leg is brown with sides turned to dark coal. Grains of burnt spices glaze the piece.

If it is, where is this gift coming from? God? Ahem! As off-putting as it might sound, biographies and autobiographies of writers reveal that most so-called gifted writers are scoundrels.

Getting up on the stage, standing before the microphone and harmonizing some words with melody don’t define recitation.

If you’re a straightforward villager like me, you’ll be curious to entertain the foreigner. Before you do there are things to consider. Foreigners have foreign ways; allowances are required. Yet, despite the inherent challenge it’s good to feed one. Even foreigners need to eat.

It’s been three nights that Aslam hasn’t been able to sleep. He has been trying so hard to fall asleep on the divan for three nights – the divan that he fancifully got carpentered and laid out in the study room of his gigantic apartment in Bashundhara, for the specific purpose of lying down to read and eventually doze off.

Like melting chocolate Earth melts into angel-smoothe

The US $25,000 DSC Prize for South Asian Literature, which is now in its ninth year, announced its keenly awaited longlist on September 25, 2019. The longlist of 15 novels, which represent the best in South Asian fiction writing, was unveiled by the chair of the jury panel Harish Trivedi at a special event at the Oxford Bookstore in New Delhi.