Towrin Zaman

Navigating the lines between gender politics, feminist beliefs and love for romance

When millions of lives are at stake and indiscriminate violations of human rights are perpetuated, there is no longer space to entertain the debate on whether the art should be separated from the artist

Dr. Huq steered a generation of climate researchers and activists, having inspired most of the leading climate activists and actors active currently

While the term "fanfiction" may not have existed, the practice certainly did. Fanfiction has been argued to have influenced significant literary works such as the Homeric epics, Shakespeare's plays, and even Miguel Cervantes' Don Quixote.

It was impossible to explore all the kisoks in a single outing, with there being 900 of these bookstalls in total hosted by around 200 sellers, straddling both sides of the Seine riverbank.

Growing up, I never analysed what drew me to the Feluda novels. It is only now that I marvel at how Feluda remained the fiction novel read at leisure by a self-proclaimed Bookworm such as myself for so long in my childhood.

Little has been written about Maharani Jindan Kaur, the youngest and last queen of the Sikh empire. Born as the humble daughter of the royal kennel keeper, Jindan saw a life of massive upheaval, living as the youngest queen to a regent and then ultimately a rebel and an exile.

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.

A solemn tribute to mothers and to our nation’s unrelenting humanity, Hussain’s novel shows us the people and the Bangladesh we could more often be.

Ruta Sepetys’s The Fountains of Silence (Penguin Books, 2019) takes place in the 1950s, in a Spain reigned by fear and stifling laws, caught between the dichotomy of non-existent human rights on the one side, and a flourishing tourist scene and wealthy visitors wooed by the national regime on the other.

We asked some of the prominent writers and academics from Bangladesh about the books they most enjoyed in 2020. Some of them confessed that the year has been too difficult to find much time for reading.

Hashim & Family (John Murray, 2020) takes us on a journey across two countries, spanning two decades. It begins with the titular Hashim moving from East Pakistan to Manchester in the 1960s in hopes of a better living, inspired by his cousin Rofikul, himself an immigrant of a few years.