For three years, Indian journalist Sudeep Sen, American designer and editor Kelley Lynch, and Bangladeshi photographer Tanvir, worked together to bring out Postcards from Bangladesh, a thick coffee table book with photographs and text chronicling the life and people of the country.

Its authors describe the book as "a personal and artistic sojourn that uses prose, poetry, and photography to create a poetic document, a film in freeze-frames."

The book depicts all the major aspects of Bangladesh – the Bengali diet of rice and fish; the unique six seasons, especially the monsoons; forests and trees; flowers; crafts and artefacts; clothing; the great rivers; the nuances of religion; architecture; old Sonargaon; and popular literature and music.

The pictures and the text evoke the atmosphere of the places visited, although there seems to be too much white space on many pages that could have easily been filled up.

One of the better chapters is the one called faces, which depicts the lives of Bangladeshis through pictures and interviews. Hasina Begum, for example, is a rural woman who had her first child at 13 and realised too late that more children mean more suffering. Her husband left her to marry again - several times - and although he wants to come back to her, she knows she is better off without him.

"In the beginning I had problems as a woman living on my own. Now the local people have seen that I am not a bad woman, so they don’t bother me," she says.

Much of the book is devoted to pictures and descriptions of the effect of nature on the country, since Bangladesh is still very much at the mercy of the elements, water in particular.

There is one chapter that contains copies of photographs presented as postcards inscribed with poems about nature, love and feelings.

The chapter called humanlandscape includes vivid photographs and descriptions of markets, ship breaking, day-labourers, honey-gatherers and Dhaka.

Prayer call and bricks and mortar show us Bangladesh’s beautiful mosques, old and new.

The book ends with a description of a river trip on the Buriganga that included a visit to a famous rickshaw painter.

Overall, Postcards from Bangladesh is a pleasant book that gives a good idea of the country, although perhaps the picture maybe a little on the rosy side. The disagreeable aspects have not been portrayed, but then perhaps it is not the job of this book to do so.

Indeed, the blurb claims the book seeks to present a Bangladesh that is "outside the purview of development manuals, disaster media stories, and government tourist guides."