essay

ESSAY / 'A terrible beauty is born' in Gaza and West Bank

Pre-occupation Palestine had, to use Anglo-American poet WH Auden's words, "marble well-governed cities" full of "vines and olive trees." But Israel and its allies have turned it into "an artificial wilderness"

ESSAY / Desire, Identity, and the boundaries of silence

Saikat Majumdar, a professor of English and Creative Writing at Ashoka University, is a writer whose works delve deep into the intricacies of identity, desire, and the tensions between personal yearnings and institutional expectations.

ESSAY / Spectacularised rape

In the psyche and schema of the average transnational Bangladeshi, rape is visible and legitimate only when it takes spectacular forms—violent, brutal, deadly.

16 Days of Activism / On invisibilised violence

In classic Bengali fiction, the kitchen is a central site for conflict and community bonding.

ESSAY / The vampires of Bangla literature

Pale, aristocratic, seductive forces lurking in the dark—when we think of vampires, we often perceive them through a western lens

ESSAY / On the national anthem of Bangladesh: An apologetic discourse

The recent attack on “Amar Shonar Bangla” stems from this type of attempt to categorise the national anthem, leading to further allegations against it

ESSAY / Falling through the cracks of the ‘normal’

There is something to be said about the innate process of otherising a person with disability, and pushing them out of the group of the ‘norm’ and into the group of the ‘exception’.

ESSAY / Evil never looked this good

Even without a full-blown sympathetic backstory, a villain’s motivations can be complex.

ESSAY / William Blake: Pioneering psychoethnography in art and poetry

As we continue to grapple with questions of identity, meaning, and societal change, Blake's visionary oeuvre serves as a guiding light

April 27, 2024
April 27, 2024

Intertextuality in Shahaduz Zaman’s ‘Prithibite Hoyto Brihaspatibar’

Shahaduz Zaman stands out prominently as a significant figure in the contemporary Bangla literary landscape, utilising intertextuality throughout his works, and   infusing various texts and genres into his narratives.

April 18, 2024
April 18, 2024

‘The day begins wrong’: Mastering tension and suspense in fiction

In my creative writing classes, whether at the University of Toronto or the Hermitage Residency in Bangladesh, I emphasise that any student of fiction must first master suspense

March 23, 2024
March 23, 2024

The English-Bangla conundrum continues

When my literature professor heard I had been delving into Bangla literature and cultural media in pursuit of a self-undertaken project to finally learn Bangla, she suggested I see the 1970 film Jibon Thekey Neya.

March 22, 2024
March 22, 2024

To read as an academic: The transformative journey of a reader turned student

I became curious as to how the experience of reading might change for someone who studied it for a living, and how the lens of a literature student might differ from that of a creative writing one

March 9, 2024
March 9, 2024

Between falling and failing

Although there is much merit to the representation of women’s pain, the evolution of the heavily aestheticised “sad girl” trope in popular culture has started to make a mawkish caricature of real women’s suffering

February 29, 2024
February 29, 2024

The promises and pitfalls of decolonial thinking

The craze that once prevailed in academia over postcolonialism no longer seems to hover around there anymore.

February 23, 2024
February 23, 2024

“Dostoevsky” by Ahmed Sofa

A translation of Ahmed Sofa's essay on Dostoyevsky

February 17, 2024
February 17, 2024

Romance and unfulfillment in the past and the present

Much like most media geared toward women, romance novels have frequently received flack for its supposed shallowness, absurdity, and flamboyancy.

February 3, 2024
February 3, 2024

On ‘Gaza Monologues, the Land of Sad Oranges’: A theatrical performance by Prachyanat

How do you attempt to understand testimonies of mass public trauma?

January 25, 2024
January 25, 2024

The first semester is your shitty first draft

Like many veterans, I joined a creative writing MFA program because I wanted to evolve as a writer.