A hidden gem of Partition Literature
Sunlight on a Broken Column by Attia Hosain is a must-read for fans of Manto, Chughtai, and Partition Literature I discovered Partition literature long after history lessons in school. One story that still haunts me is Sadat Hasan Manto’s ‘Toba Tek Singh‘. In it, the titular character echoes the physical and emotional chaos of millions […]
Horror stories where you least expect them
Fans of horror, this one is for you!
7 Must-Read Translated Gujarati Fiction for your TBR
For a multilingual country such as ours, translation is as much a political act as a cultural one; in reading about the different cultures and peoples each language encompasses, we invariably find our shared nationhood. As Gujarati author, poet and professor Panna Trivedi said in an earlier interview, “Each community (and) culture has its own […]
The Tainted by Cauvery Madhavan
Set in India between the years 1920 to 1982, The Tainted by Cauvery Madhavan is the story of the Irish Connaught Rangers and it traces the lives of the Anglo-Indian community. It’s a picture of post-colonial India entwined with a bittersweet romance in the background, foregrounded by questions of identity, belongingness, and family. The Plot […]
Rucha Chitrodia’s It’s Also About Mynah
Love and loss, heartbreak and healing, regrets and hopes. A mishmash of people and their stories, a coming-of-age tale that is as much about the old mill lands of Mumbai as it is about its residents. It’s Also About Mynah by Rucha Chitrodia (published by Amaryllis) is about a young girl’s abrupt plunge into the […]
Club you to Death by Anuja Chauhan
“At which point in the book did you figure out who the killer was?” M asks me, as we pause in between giggling over Anuja Chauhan’s delectable male heroes. “I figured it out when…,” she goes on to describe a scene in Club You to Death, Chauhan’s latest, described on social media as a “rom-crime”. […]
The Greatest Hindi Stories Ever Told : Ed. by Poonam Saxena
Like its precedents, The Greatest Hindi Stories Ever Told selected and translated by Poonam Saxena brings forth 25 stories representing the finest short fiction in Hindi literature ranging from Premchand, Mannu Bhandari to Uday Prakash, Sara Rai. Covering a range of subjects, the common themes across the stories include inequality, partition and its aftermath, modernity […]
In Conversation With: Jenny Bhatt
Jenny Bhatt is a writer, translator and a book-critic with two acclaimed books out over the last year – Each of Us Killers, that was out in September 2020 and is a story-collection and Ratno Dholi: The Best Stories of Dhumketu, was out in October 2020 and received wide-spread attention fo its exceptional style and also because […]
Pankaj Mishra’s Bland Fanatics reeks of the accusations it makes. Here’s why
Pankaj Mishra is a public intellectual, “one of the great thinkers” as reads his introduction on the cover jacket of his latest book: Bland Fanatics: Liberals, Race and Empire (2020, Juggernaut Books). Bland Fanatics borrows its title from Reinhold Niebuhr, a theologian. In 1957, Niebuhr wrote: ‘Among the lesser culprits of history are the bland […]
Life in a Gujarati village, the eyes of a little girl
Fence by Ila Arab Mehta translated from Gujarati by Rita Kothari follows the journey of Fateema Lokhandwala from her formative years as the daughter of a scrap metal seller (hence the surname) to her role as a professor. Plot points Most of Fence is about Fateema, a young Muslim girl in a small village in […]
