“All literature is regional; or conversely, no literature is regional”—is a common sentiment to have today, but I had first read those lines from Joyce Carol Oates, in her preface to a book of stories by one of Canada’s most gifted storytellers, Alistair MacLeod. In MacLeod’s short stories, his Cape Breton Island was a refrain through which the momentous lives of his ordinary characters came through.
Izumi Suzuki was little known outside of Japan during her short lifetime. The Japanese author and actress had remained a cult figure most of her life.
Everett’s breezy, fast-moving retelling of Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884) is about putting in some due respect.
I plead but I know there is nothing I can do. Akbar, in a rare fit of courage, tries to intervene. But the old man does not budge. Maybe he knows about Mina and me.
Sometime ago, a writer reached out to me with a request. His debut novel was being published later in the year and he was wondering if I would be open to reviewing it. I was aware of the book, having read it when it was still only a draft. The author was not someone I only knew, either, but a mentor who had supported my writing in many ways, even through monetary means. Refusing him, then, felt tantamount to betrayal. But I had to in the end, and though he understood, I still came out of the exchange feeling guilty of being unhelpful or, worse, ungrateful.
The eight girls in Headshot clearly hope to escape the chaos of their lives in the ring.
The disinformation game is now increasingly a part of our political makeup.
“The liberation that comes through sorrow is greater than the sorrow,” says Nikhilesh, in Home and the World. I quote from Penguin’s Modern Classics edition, in Sreejata Guha’s translation.
Bengali literature has had a rich history of prose, beginning more or less in the early 19th century under the colonial Raj.
When a few boys arrive at the couple’s flat to seek out their college-going daughter, Rekha, the parents are thrown into a whirlwind of adventure.
The mosque committee was quite displeased with Rashed, their young muezzin.
Shakespeare’s enduring international appeal is in part due to the remarkable personalities he had invented.
That split second when the rubber slaps your skin and stays, when there is a click of a switch, a levitation, a lightness of your body—everyone remembers the first time they are knocked out, everyone except Mr Suleyman Khar, regional light-heavyweight titleist,
Though on its surface Sanya Rushdi’s Hospital, translated into English by Arunava Sinha and recently longlisted for the 2024 Stella Prize, looks to be a breezy, short read—it is anything but. With her rather flattened, sparse prose, Rushdi has managed to write an enduring piece of autofiction, a compelling account of psychosis that neither sensationalises nor withers away any sentimentality from the struggles of mental health.
Shahaduz Zaman is a familiar face in Bangladeshi literature, whose literary career spans decades of fruitful work. He regularly writes columns for Bangla newspapers, has written a few notable biographical fiction, such as Ekjon Komolalebu (Prothoma, 2017), based around the life of Jibanananda Das, and has garnered some duly needed appreciation for ethnographic work on the history of medicine during the liberation war.
Jhumpa Lahiri has always been the rare author whose prowess in the art of the short-story far surpassed her novelistic talents.
More than anything, Suzuki shows that the key to being an alien is not to be outlandish but to be sickeningly more human.
Bangladeshi literature in English has had a considerably late start compared to its South Asian counterparts in India and Pakistan. A few exceptions aside, a consistency came to be seen only by the early 2010s.
