book review

BOOK REVIEW: NONFICTION / Cross and concrete: Christianity’s built contradictions

Twelve Churches succeeds in its ambitious goal of revealing Christianity's global complexity through architecture and human stories, embracing the deepest contested contradictions that add to the pageantry of religious faith in the modern world.

BOOK REVIEW: FICTION / A tangled knot of wealth and sin

The novella is written from the perspective of an unnamed narrator, who represents sloth. He is a nostalgic and unambitious man. Legally and on paper, he is the director of their family business, Sona Masala, although he does no actual work.

BOOK REVIEW: FICTION / Finding common ground: How ‘Bela and Lily’ celebrates friendship across cultures

For bilingual readers, especially for children of Bangladeshi immigrants, it is striking to see how organically English and Bangla words interact on the page

BOOK REVIEW: FICTION / All’s almost well

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?

BOOK REVIEW: NONFICTION / An inter-cultural romance

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.

BOOK REVIEW: FICTION / Between home and elsewhere

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

BOOK REVIEW: NONFICTION / Contested words, painful genealogies

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.

BOOK REVIEW: FICTION / Growing up ordinary in a toxic work culture

Focusing on themes of systemic injustice, and resistance, Counterattack at Thirty is a captivating and timely read—perfect for anyone interested in personal narratives infused with keen social commentary. 

BOOK REVIEW: POETRY / Poetry in short-hand

The idea of outsourcing the selection of poems to a fellow poet-publisher Dustin Pickering, lends the already published poems of Kiriti Sengupta another round of robust readership.

November 20, 2025
November 20, 2025

Contested words, painful genealogies

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.

November 14, 2025
November 14, 2025

Growing up ordinary in a toxic work culture

Focusing on themes of systemic injustice, and resistance, Counterattack at Thirty is a captivating and timely read—perfect for anyone interested in personal narratives infused with keen social commentary. 

November 13, 2025
November 13, 2025

A graphic rebellion against patriarchy

We are living in the advancing era, mended meticulously with dreams and expectations. It is the era of new norms. And yet, a woman asking for the basic human rights will be scrutinised for standing up for herself.

November 13, 2025
November 13, 2025

Poetry in short-hand

The idea of outsourcing the selection of poems to a fellow poet-publisher Dustin Pickering, lends the already published poems of Kiriti Sengupta another round of robust readership.

November 12, 2025
November 12, 2025

Writing about writing, history, and Palestine

In The Message, Coates details several experiences from his travels to Senegal and Palestine, his correspondences with a teacher in South Carolina fighting against a school board’s push to ban books with topics deemed controversial, and his personal takeaways from these events.

November 6, 2025
November 6, 2025

Between expectations and choice

Translation is a bridge to connect different cultures and their literatures. It’s a medium to reflect the gems of a country’s literature around the globe.

November 1, 2025
November 1, 2025

A prayer for Mauritius

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.

October 30, 2025
October 30, 2025

From sacred art to consciousness: A leap too far

When Dan Brown finally returned in 2025 with The Secret of Secrets—the sixth Robert Langdon adventure—the world that devoured The Da Vinci Code (Doubleday, 2003) had mixed reactions to the story.

October 30, 2025
October 30, 2025

A play within a space opera

When I first learned about Hamlet: Book One of the Post-ApocalypticSpace Shakespeare by American novelist Ted Neill, I was immediately intrigued. While not the first science fiction Shakespeare, Neill’s attempt to produce a complete series represents a noteworthy Shakespeare project. As of September 2025, Neill has published his version of Hamlet, Othello, and Twelfth Night with “many more” listed as planned. He appears to want to produce all 37 plays.

October 29, 2025
October 29, 2025

Prelude, Puzzle and Premonition

Uketsu, the anonymous writer and a macabre enthusiast, fictionalizes himself as the protagonist in the novel Strange Houses, where he is introduced to a series of unpleasant experiences in several houses through his acquaintances.