Premalekhanam by Vaikom Muhammad Basheer
Premalekhanam which means ‘love letter’, is a Malayalam novel written by Vaikom Muhammad Basheer, fondly known as Beypore Sultan. The book is a short read which is essentially an endearing love story, but it has its poignant moments too. Plot Points Kesavan Nair has fallen head over heels for Saramma, his house owner’s daughter; Saramma […]
Book of Rachel by Esther David
As a co-host for Discovering India Readathon 2020, one of the prompts was to read books from minority authors. This included the Jewish community of our country, a drop in the ocean by numbers. The only prominent Jewish author that I had heard of was Nissim Ezekiel thanks to his poem ‘The night of the […]
A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth
Vikram Seth’s A Suitable Boy is charming if a somewhat rambling tale of love and marriage. At over 1300 pages and 591,552 words, A Suitable Boy isn’t so much a novel with a plot, as much as a series of intersecting, meandering accounts of people’s lives in the social and political context of 1950s India. […]
Ep. 7: Home and away with Sayantani Dasgupta
Essayist, short-story writer, and author of ‘House of Nails‘, and ‘Fire Girl’, Sayantani Dasgupta speaks to Ayushi Mona about her childhood experiences – from being an avid-reader to enjoying the dynamics of Delhi, from getting emotional to evolving as a person who places everything in contexts, from what moved her about Delhi to books that […]
Estuary by Perumal Murugan
Translated by Nandini Krishan Estuary (noun): the tidal mouth of a large river, where the tide meets the stream What attracted me towards Perumal Murugan’s latest, Estuary, apart from the writer himself, was the title. And the apparent discrepancy between the title and the blurb described Estuary as “a razor-sharp parody of everything from e-commerce […]
In Conversation with: Paul Melo e Castro
Paul Melo e Castro is a British scholar and academic, known for his work on editing and translating, particularly Indo-Portuguese literature. His area of work is Lusophone literature, film and visual culture. Monsoon, by Vimala Devi, translated by Paul Melo e Castro: Through these stories, written with a mix of poignant nostalgia and sharp criticism, Vimala Devi recreates […]
Bedanabala by Mahasweta Devi
“If the sky were sheet of paper/ If every blade of grass on earth were pen/ If the seven seas were awash with ink/ If all of that were used up even then/ It would not be enough for their history to be written.” The popular adage “The pen is mightier than the sword” stands […]
Herbert by Nabarun Bhattacharya
Translated by Sunandini Banerjee In 1993, Nabarun Bhattacharya published his magnum opus, Herbert (or Harbart), translated into English by Sunandini Banerjee in 2017 (this is the third translation of the novel). What Sunandini Banerjee brings before us is a translation that is deemed unparalleled pertaining to the other two translations that have happened thus far. […]
Monsoon by Vimala Devi
Monsoon, Paul Melo e Castro’s English translation of Vimala Devi’s Moncao, is about divisions between human beings. Vimala Devi’s short story cycle was first published in 1963 and is set in Goa before it became an indivisible part of the Indian Union. Here is a Goa where Portuguese is still spoken by the upper classes, […]
Breast Stories by Mahasweta Devi
When Purple Pencil Project asked me if I would review Breast Stories by Mahasweta Devi, I almost refused. What is there to say about Mahasweta Devi that has not been said before? What can I have anything to add? I come from a part of India where Mahasweta Devi is revered. I can’t possibly critique […]
