Los Angeles Times: The price of free speech in Bangladesh
http://www.latimes.com/books/jacketcopy/la-ca-jc-bangladesh-20160815-snap-story.html In February this year the authorities in Bangladesh...
Bookies and the Booker
In 1971, the Man Booker Prize committee succeeded in persuading Saul Bellow to be one of the judges. The nattily dressed, sharp-tongued...
An Incurable Cure
End of last month, I was holding gold dust right there in my hot little hand: a ticket to ride to The Cure’s solo show at the Royal...
Ghost in the Machine
Know what guys, I’m going to go out on a limb and say that while it’s only April the most talked about piece in literary journalism for...
Something for Everyone
Poets are touched by the gods, but not by the publishers. Old joke from creative writing courses in American universities, but how much...
Christopher Hitchens: A Tribute
Having been brought up in a Bengali household where any form of dissent or challenge to authority was tantamount to beyadobi, i.e.,...
Karrie Fransman: Her Graphic World
The wonderful Dave Eggers tried to draw me – his way of signing my copy of You Shall Know Our Velocity, his second book. Failing...
Pankaj Mishra's Fight
Pankaj Mishra tells me that he is no fan of literary festivals. “At literary festivals, the published word is somewhat replaced by the...
The Muzak of Jhumpa Lahiri
Summer bids farewell. It is the perfect time to long for a dip into warmth of homeland nostalgia aka "immigrant fiction", though the term...
Meeting Tariq Ali
When I wrote to Tariq Ali, to introduce Bengal Lights and to invite him to the 2013 Dhaka edition of the Hay Festival, I wasn’t sure what...