I saw a leaf falling yesterday. 

And in the streets of Shonarga, Luna went about on foot, her nupur clinking against her ankles, notifying all passers-by of the good queen’s proximity.

SHOUT and Daily Star Books organised the first instalment of their monthly event Slam Poetry Night in the capital’s The Daily Star Centre yesterday.

Azhar was a forty-year-old bachelor and an expert locksmith. He also owned a hardware store. He was generally considered to be a good citizen even though fifteen years ago, he went to prison for stealing jewels. But since then, he has been very careful about not getting caught. The stolen money helped him travel around and enjoy the small luxuries of life.

Peach seas murmur with the colours of the setting sun. There are no peach trees here — only

After I go

In the chilly winter night as I walked past the forest, I heard a feeble crying of a baby. I shivered in my warm clothes.

Inscribe my name, beloved, With care and affection In the temple of your secluded heart.   Trace the beat of the music That plays in my soul In the anklets on your feet.

Etched a figurine, taking dots and lines and curves Xeroxed our desires weaving through the blurs

The very day in bless’d disarray, this is no time to stay in place. As begging kids and homeless dogs flee the chasing skies above,

It was not very late when he saw her inside the cafe. 

The poems in this ambitious collection are by women poets writing in Bangla, who have emerged from the land that is now Bangladesh—having lived, or are still living here, or are now part of the first-generation diaspora.

All these years walls of our town stood tall, home to white-winged birds, nostalgic sun, tales too deep for us to tell; last night walls came down crashing,

Come, let’s smoke a cigarette together on a dark veranda and count how many flats

Katie Kitamura’s latest novel, Intimacies (Riverhead Books, 2021), is a stunning follow-up to its critically acclaimed predecessor, A Separation (2017).

Identity is mercurial: it shifts and morphs into a new being at the change of a breeze. That change is glacial, and often happens on its own volition; but one can also grasp a new identity, hold it tight till it engulfs the old, and thereby change the trajectory of their life completely.

I am convinced that while writing her book, The Begum and the Dastan (Westland Publications, 2021), Tarana Husain Khan’s aim was to leave her readers in a literary stupor, dizzy and yearning for more.

Shengdey awoke suddenly on a bed with an old man sitting beside him. “Are you okay, my child?” He asked, idly stirring a boiling pot of tea.

Darkness on a piece of paper Black soaks the white

They took away my land, I said: Thank you for building the railroad.