For bilingual readers, especially for children of Bangladeshi immigrants, it is striking to see how organically English and Bangla words interact on the page
North South University’s Department of English and Modern Languages (DEML) concluded its first-ever Winter Fest spanning December 10-11, bringing together literature, performance, film, and visual art in a two-day celebration of creative expression on campus.
Shimulia was a remote village. A girl from this village was named Madhurilata. The origin of this name remained a mystery to most of the villagers. Nevertheless, they affectionately referred to her as Madhu, which meant honey.
The ecological impact of the 1971 War of Liberation is not as well documented as some of the other, spectacularised aspects of war.
The relationship between mutual intelligibility and linguistic classification is famously complex, often boiling down to politics rather than purely linguistic differences. In Scandinavia, Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish are treated as separate languages primarily because they belong to different countries, a separation cemented by historical events that dissolved pan-Scandinavian political unions.
As we commemorate Begum Rokeya Day, Oborodh Bashini stands not as a relic of a bygone era but as a living blueprint for modern resistance. The stories she told are specific to a time, but the structures of silencing they represent are hauntingly familiar.
A lively winter fair will present locally crafted accessories and seasonal favourites, celebrating community creativity and winter warmth
Students at the University of Liberal Arts, Bangladesh (ULAB) crowded into a packed classroom on a winter morning on Sunday, November 30, awaiting the start of a program that would be part interview, part poetry reading. “Meet the Poet: Shaheen Dil—In Conversation with Dr Mushira Habib” organised by the Department of English and Humanities was an hour-long dive into the life and work of poet Dr Shaheen Dil, a Bangladeshi writer and retired academic, banker, and consultant living in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
If you have ever carried a tote bag to a coffee shop solely to place it on the table next to a freshly prepared matcha latte, you already know the assignment. Reading, in the modern era, isn’t really about “reading” or enjoying a story—it is about signaling. It is about letting the person seated at the next table know that while you could be doomscrolling TikTok, you choose to instead engage with a higher form of brain simulation.
Fiction has long chronicled that women have always worked more than what is counted, felt more than what is acknowledged, and lost more than what anyone will ever quantify.
All’s Well circles one maddening question: what does pain need to look like before someone finally believes you? And how do you stop before it gets too discomfortable?
The author of this book is the protagonist of a charming inter-cultural romance. He is one of fewer than a handful of living Westerners who fortuitously fell in love with Bengali literature and made a distinguished career of teaching it—at the University of Chicago in his case.
Some books explain immigrant life through nostalgia. Others through big dramatic events. Sharbari Ahmed does neither in <I>The Strangest of Fruit</I>. Her stories focus on the quieter things like small humiliations, awkward encounters, the private wounds people carry, and the memories they don’t
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.
A stunning meditation on some of the concepts that haunt our present moment—humanity and moralism, Zionism today, democracy and imperialism and perhaps most significantly, the question that lies at the very heart of the human condition: what does it mean
Every year, on June 20, World Refugee Day calls on us to remember and hold in our hearts the millions displaced by conflict, persecution, and political upheaval around the world.
These paternal characters are not easy to love, nor can they love faultlessly themselves. Yet it is precisely this contradiction—their awkward tenderness, silent failures, and undeniable devotion—that makes them so achingly human
Gupta shares her insights on reclaiming forgotten histories, reimagining myths, and connecting ancient narratives to contemporary ecological and social concerns.
These two things—the river and the train—continue to haunt and fascinate me.
Translation is risk, and poetry is the highest form of risk
The violence is domestic, institutional, and often unnamed—carried out by people who look nothing like monsters.
These stories prove one thing: art theft never goes out of fashion.
It’s very likely that Substack will become the “drawing room” of intellectuals and creative elites.
The refusal to write beautifully is often justified in the name of neutrality, of detachment, of discipline.
The Polish nurse at the rehabilitation center asks her to decide. Does Neela want to have an abortion or wait for the delivery? “You’re almost seven months,” the nurse says in English. “An abortion would be very risky.”
Asif stares at the blank page, his chest tightening with that all-too-familiar dread.
“If my father had any unpaid debt to anyone, please contact me or my younger brother Hamza,” Omar said to the congregation at the funeral, trying to sound soft and loud at the same time, “And if my father ever hurt any of you unintentionally, please forgive his soul and pray for him. Thank you.”
Is he eyeing me?.That young man with the receding hairline, flipping through a paperback on a discount table. No, revise that. He is not so young really, as my second take reconsiders. A freshness in his eyes made him look more youthful. If not for his thinning scalp, that little paunch un
Long, long ago, when the world was younger, wiser, softer, when the animals were braver and the people were gentler, when art lived and music sailed, and the skies were a true, honest blue, there lived a man who loved a woman, and they lived in a little house they loved very much. How they met o
Trigger warning: self harm, sexual and physical abuse “For a hundred million, Omar, are you ready?” said the host, with his everlasting grin.
The automated blinds of the penthouse in Gulshan, an upscale area, rise with a soft hum, revealing a picture-perfect Dhaka morning.
The Little Boy.He sold magic .mostly for free, .wrapped in candy wrappers, .joy and spring-coloured rosettes, .and, at times, priced at .a few tufts of dandelion threads.
The unnamed You can get lost trying to get back to the exit at the Vatican Museum.
If every leaf that falls is a memory you’ve forgotten, then let my ink become rain— so you might remember how it felt to grow with me.
As the breeze takes on its familiar chill and exams finally come to an end, my favourite season quietly takes over the city. It is not the long vacation, nor the crisp winter air. It is wedding season. All I want from this stretch of the year is a fresh stack of invitations, each promising a feast for the senses and, of course, a plate of biryani.
In a wilting summer swelter of 1797 in London, a name was born twice–mother Mary Wollstonecraft wound the clock of daughter Mary Wollstonecraft (Godwin)’s life, for the very first time.
There is always a subtle tension when a story migrates across cultures. Some narratives travel with the lightness of wind, reshaping themselves almost effortlessly inside new imaginations, while others arrive heavy with the weight of the worlds that first produced them.
If the girls we read about could speak today, their voices would be both sharp and unflinching.
To understand the deep-seated relevance of this modern debate, we must embark on a journey into the heart of Sarat Chandra’s literature, where these battles first found voice.
Shell-shocked, I talked to the office staff. They all looked sad, a little perplexed too, perhaps seeing my very unusual, distressed face.
I first heard Taylor Swift’s song “The Fate of Ophelia” on the radio during a road trip to New Hampshire the day after it was released on October 3.
For the Class of ’69 at Dhaka University, that bond was embodied in one man—Syed Mayeenul Huq. He wasn’t just a friend; he was the quiet, steady centre that held their entire constellation together.
“Graveyard Shift” is a highly anticipated work by M L Rio, following her success with If We Were Villains (Flatiron Books), released in 2017. Like its predecessor, the novella “Graveyard Shift” also stays in the realm of dark academia; however, the similarities between the two books end there.
My readings of the two books—the subject of this write-up—happened to be on two momentous occasions, set two decades apart in utterly contrasting ways.
