There are two versions of the story of publishing in Bangladesh. The official version, tokenised every year during the month-long Ekushey Boi Mela, trumpets the Bangladeshi exceptionalism of a well-read country with a rich cultural and literary heritage. According to this version, publishers are in rude health; every citizen is a reader, every other citizen is a poet.

But if we take a closer look at this façade, it falls away at the most basic interrogation to reveal another version. Publishing in Bangladesh is a battle against creative censorship – censorship by many covert means through a combination of operational factors and conditions imposed on an informal industry. The robustness that should come with the healthy development of an essential sector is missing.