The shelf / 7 Asian healing fiction recommendations for rainy days

Because of colonialism and the westernisation of our education systems, many of us grow up learning history from a narrow angle not knowing about the scholars who shaped knowledge in other parts of the world. We often learn about modern science without learning where many of its ideas first came from. As a result, the lives and works of Muslim scholars from the past remain unfamiliar, even though their contributions helped build the world we live in today.

Sometimes it sneaks up in ways you do not expect, like in the quiet chaos of a city street where rain drips off umbrellas, and the smell of frying snacks mingles with wet asphalt.

There are a few old trees with wide trunks—I do not know their names—just beside my library. I never forget to have a quick look at the leaves during coming and going to the library.

Using a hashtag is activism In a world of biterature.

My brittle nails become the sharpest knife Under the light of obscure scrutiny

As the calendar turned to February 2, 2026, marking what would have been the 111th birthday of Khushwant Singh, the silence from his iconic Sujan Singh Park residence feels particularly loud. Singh was more than a writer; he was a cultural weather vane who pointed toward honesty even when the winds of political correctness blew the hardest.

“There is no place on earth where women are safe,” declares Inés, the protagonist of Isabel Herguera’s animated film Sultana’s Dream (2023).

The God of the Woods caught my attention while I was excavating for my next read on Goodreads.

It is a winter day in a small town at the far eastern edge of the Himalaya, in the Chinese province of Yunnan. The province is known for its mild climate.

In a small room in 50 Purana Paltan line, shelves groan under the weight of posters, photographs, tickets, flyers, souvenirs, folders, books, and fading documents.

For years, speculative dystopian fiction has trained readers to expect the worst: scorched planets, collapsing governments, ruthless technologies, and futures where survival is the only victory left. Solarpunk pushes back against that narrative. Instead of asking how the world ends, it asks a far more radical question: what if we fix it? What if cities worked with nature instead of against it? What if technology served communities, not corporations? And what if hope wasn’t naive, but necessary?

“Agunmukha” translates to “fire-mouth” in English. The word mirrors the tumultuous life of Noorjahan Bose, shaped by her early years in cyclone- and flood-prone small towns of Barisal; her experience of sexual violence at the age of 10; the loss of Imamuddin, her first love and husband, to smallpox; single motherhood; and her later marriage to Swadesh Bose, a Hindu man—an interfaith union opposed by society.

One of the great pleasures of reading enough of the plays of William Shakespeare is that, after a while, you feel like you know him. British actor Patrick Stewart famously stated, “...he feels like an old friend—someone who just went out [...] to get another bottle of wine.” While Shakespeare scholars have succeeded in creating a rough Shakespeare biography based on historical documents, many of them will admit that there are large gaps in our knowledge.

It is undoubted that George Orwell is one of the most important political writers of the 20th century. Labelling him a political writer reflects how deeply his life and works were influenced by the events he lived through.

Rupert Grey, a descendant of Charles Grey and best known professionally as a leading libel and copyright lawyer stood against this statement. “If Bangladesh is a basket case,” Grey tells The Daily Star, “then it is so in the best possible way.” For him, the term collapses under the sheer vitality of the country. A single square metre of a Bangladeshi street, he argues, holds more energy than entire neighbourhoods in London. Where life in England often unfolds in rigid routines, Bangladesh thrives in spontaneity—where a hanging lighter at a tea stall can become a moment of shared choreography.

In Dhaka, the traffic doesn’t run; it limps. At seven in the morning, the buses are full, coughing black air, CNGs wheezing past, rickshaws threading between them like colourful tops.

Emily’s right leg trembled as she stood alone on the wooden stage, the darkness that surrounded her felt almost alive.

Inner monologue: “Life is a bit sometimes. You don’t know what might happen the next moment.

My memoirs of 2025, do you know I want to forget you?

Lessons in Chemistry is a powerful read for anyone who feels alone in a male-dominated world. For those who have been vilified for having a voice, dignity, and the courage to exist unapologetically in a world that resists change, this novel proves galvanising.