author

ESSAY / Zadie Smith’s rhetorical tricks

Smith’s framing runs into the same blind spot in other criticisms levelled at student protests, i.e. it detaches the student’s cause from the activists, academics, and journalists, Palestinian or otherwise, who have been documenting Israel’s settler colonial project for 75 years.

CREATIVE NONFICTION / Baldwin in December

Baldwin was sitting right beside, smoking, killing time, thinking of love and loneliness, friendships and misfortunes. Of Martin and Malcolm.

Tribute / The alter ego of Agatha Christie

Absorbing these books is like viewing the world through the writer’s eyes—the pain she felt, the love she did not receive and the manner she perceived the people around her.

Essay / Feeding desperation

Dickens, a literary luminary of his era, exposes the vicious cycle where hunger and desperation divide society, laying bare the inequities perpetuated by an exploitative system.

Like father, unlike son: Martin Amis’s place in literature

Perhaps Martin Amis’s works do not grab me for the most part because it veers too far away from the humanism of, say, Saul Bellow—a writer Martin greatly admires and has written about extensively.

Interview / On weaving family, culture and place into a compelling story

Nilopar Uddin's debut novel, 'The Halfways' (HQ, 2022) takes place across London, Wales, New York, and Sylhet, and focuses on the Bangladeshi immigrant experience

Bigolas Dickolas and the power of a heartfelt ‘Read this NOW’

One random tweet by a fan account has sent a 2019 book flying off the shelves, climbing bestseller charts.

A legacy of women's freedom in art

Schwartz’s narrator speaks in the choral “we”, and like a daisy chain, they connect all these women’s shared yet individual experiences of feeling closed in, being violated, feeling misunderstood by society, until they all shed their names and managed to “escap[e] the century”.

TRIBUTE / Razia Khan Amin: A Bangladeshi writer in English

As an academic, I often share with students my writings that are related to the courses I teach. That was not the case with our educators when I was a student in the Department of English at Dhaka University. The reason was not because there were no writers among our teachers.

May 16, 2023
May 16, 2023

Bigolas Dickolas and the power of a heartfelt ‘Read this NOW’

One random tweet by a fan account has sent a 2019 book flying off the shelves, climbing bestseller charts.

March 9, 2023
March 9, 2023

A legacy of women's freedom in art

Schwartz’s narrator speaks in the choral “we”, and like a daisy chain, they connect all these women’s shared yet individual experiences of feeling closed in, being violated, feeling misunderstood by society, until they all shed their names and managed to “escap[e] the century”.

December 31, 2022
December 31, 2022

Razia Khan Amin: A Bangladeshi writer in English

As an academic, I often share with students my writings that are related to the courses I teach. That was not the case with our educators when I was a student in the Department of English at Dhaka University. The reason was not because there were no writers among our teachers.

December 13, 2022
December 13, 2022

John Green slams Tumblr user accusing him of sexual abuse

The move probably came as a form of counterstroke against Twitter’s ridiculous measure of allowing people to have verified accounts with $8. “Real tired of this free speech platform requiring me to be John Green. I AM A SOCK COMPANY,” Green tweeted.

December 2, 2022
December 2, 2022

Finding myself in Orhan Pamuk books

It is also etched in the corners of multiple pages of the notebook I am writing this draft in. It is on my passport, also on my pajamas. It is the word the world knows me by—my name. Specifically, my last name, Nuri.

November 12, 2022
November 12, 2022

An encounter with Sandeep Ray

"I have lifted from these stories. I’ve stolen from these stories. But you know, I’ve remade the characters so they don’t directly relate to anyone’s biography. But I cannot deny that a lot of the anecdotes, events and arc of the story come from certain family experiences", states Sandeep Ray.

November 4, 2022
November 4, 2022

Loneliness, and what I gained from a Creative Writing degree

The workshops were the sessions I’d look forward to. Someone actually reading your work, studying it, telling you what you do well, telling you what you can improve on, all phrased constructively (“I like this!” was a banned phrase). If you’re pursuing writing, workshopping—on some level or another—is what you’ll need.

October 13, 2022
October 13, 2022

Thus, we bid goodbye to Gabo and Mercedes

Gabriel Garcia Marquez once famously said, “All human beings have three lives: public, private, and secret.”

October 11, 2022
October 11, 2022

Debunking the myth of the bestsellers

Despite the exclusivity of the title, bookstores are flooded with "number one bestsellers".

September 29, 2022
September 29, 2022

Portrait of a family through an intelligence agent’s eyes

Besides the brilliantly unconventional addition of an Intelligence Agent as the main audience, the story’s language, unflinchingly charged with a humorous tone, is enough to keep a reader’s eyes glued to the screen.