Buried beneath masses of mangled bodies of countless innocents slowly pulled from the shrapnel and debris, their remaining flesh torn in the extraction, lies a reflection of the world’s inhumanity.

Written in deep striking prose, Saramandi lends her authorial voice to the changing dynamics of her life whose future is described as  “a line that turned out to be a loop” similar to the fate of her homeland.

The book examines the context and circumstances that spurred these six central figures to devise or promote the solutions they did

One of the memoir’s most striking elements is Westover’s refusal to paint her family in simple black and white

In Thorns in My Quilt, Mohua Chinappa offers readers a searingly honest and emotionally resonant series of letters addressed to her late father. But before these letters unfold, we are led into a history that anchors the personal in the political—a story of displacement, privilege, and loss that stretches from Dhaka to Shillong.

Review of ‘Jodi Lokkho Thake Otut: Shafolyer Khola Koushol’ (Anyaprokash, 2025) by Asif Iqbal

Mowtushi Mahruba’s Africa in the Bengali Imagination: from Calcutta to Kampala, 1928-73 is a distinctive and pioneering work on the way the continent led to creative writing in English as well as Bengali over the decades

When I picked up Baitullah Quaderee’s 'Bangladesher Shater Dashaker Kabita', it wasn’t particularly out of scholarly curiosity. The book is, by design, a doctoral thesis—its structure conventional, its chapters arranged by academic demand—but what caught my interest was not the format, nor even the topic. It was the author himself. 

Review of ‘Reframing My Worth: Memoir of a Bangladeshi-Canadian Woman’ by Habiba Zaman (FriesenPress, 2024)

In the contested notion of creating a ‘nation,’ few ideas provoke as much ire among the everyday citizens of a bordered entity as the concept of a space—one that carries with it the weight of instilling an identity.

Review of ‘Bangladesh: A Legacy of Blood’ (Hodder and Stoughton, 1986) by Anthony Mascarenhas

Review of ‘Renegotiating Patriarchy’ (LSE Press, 2024) by Naila Kabeer

Proverbs, short and profound, often sum up wisdom passed down through generations. Bangla, one of the world’s most spoken languages, is rich with such gems. One such saying in the language—”manush ki bolbe?”—is central to Intimacies of Violence, a debut book by Dr Nadine Shaanta Murshid, an associate professor at the University at Buffalo.

Folk Melody of Bangladesh: An Anthology of Bangladesh Folk Music in Standard Notation is a music anthology that compiles 204 carefully chosen folk songs of Bangladesh that date from the 16th century.

Review of ‘Nexus’ (Random House, 2024)

Review of ‘Forgotten Foods: Memories and Recipes from Muslim South Asia’ (Picador India, 2023) edited by Siobhan Lambert-Hurley, Tarana Husain Khan, and Claire Chambers

During the 53 years of Bangladesh’s existence, its people have had to endure and take down two autocratic regimes; not only did they oust an autocrat in July 2024 through a mass uprising, but 1991 also saw the downfall of the autocrat, Hussain Muhammad Ershad, through another rebellion.

In Alex Christofi’s newly published fascinating book—Cypria: A Journey to the Heart of the Mediterranean—we get a deep close-range look at one of world civilisation’s interesting hotspots that has long swayed between the cross-currents of the rise and fall of the great monotheisms.

Review of ‘Bidrohi Puran’ (Pendulum Books, 2024) by Arif Rahman

Inevitably, Kaiser Haq’s The New Frontier and Other Odds and Ends in Verse and Prose is about the poet, his poetic predilections, and situatedness at this time of human existence. In many ways it is typical of the verse we have come to expect from our leading poet in English for a long time now, but in other ways it articulates his present-day concerns in new and striking poetic measures.