The ‘second liberation’ of Bangladesh?

A repost, after talking to Tahmima Anam, whose new novel has a remarkable uprising

Students protests against Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina. Image by Bornil Amin, Unsplash. And TWTB in conversation with Tahmima Anam

This Week Those Books is chock-full of crucial context **in just five minutes — from fiction and non-fiction — to the shouty, doomscroll news cycle.**

**Go to this link for a quick read**

Housekeeping note: I’m away on holiday until June 7. This is an updated version of a post that originally appeared in August 2024

The Big Story:

Bangladesh is in the news in the creative and finance worlds, nearly two years after an uprising that ousted its autocratic prime minister Sheikh Hasina.

• Bangladesh-born prizewinning author Tahmima Anam just published her fifth novel Uprising, about woman power, and TWTB spoke to her at length at a literary festival in London.¹ (More to come on that.)
• The International Monetary Fund chief for Bangladesh has said the country has requested a new financial aid package, a sign that its economic situation remains doleful.

This Week’s Books:

• An anthropologist assesses crowds as a political actor in Bangladesh.
• Fact disguised as fiction from the life of a child during the first liberation of Bangladesh.

Click to read on about the books and the back story