Want to read translated Hindi stories? Pick this book
The nine stories of Chandan Pandey and Sayari Debnath’s The Keeper of Desolation are stories coming together, translated hindi stories that show us a different India; one we may not necessarily meet every day. Of the men whom we may only read about in the newspapers Not the newspaper that you open on an app; […]
Exploring Dalit Literature: A Legacy Of The Indian Anti-caste Movement
[First written by Rupal Vyas, updated and expanded upon by Prakruti Maniar] Stories are not just child’s play; they give us our voice, our place in history, our identity. A story, is powerful, because who writes it, whose story gets represented and recorded has shaped history, has shaped how we look at the world, at […]
Sadness and Silence: The World of Woebegone’s Warehouse of Words
Woebegone’s Warehouse of Words is a dystopian fantasy where humans are the Speakers but rendered mute. Must you speak? Then buy a Word. Yes, the Words are all stacked up in the titular Warehouse, manned (rather worded) by Woebegone, who itself is a Word. There is a zoo next door where Thesaurus Rex lives in […]
Tragedy shrouds this fantasy; the story of Kashmir goes on
Shortlisted for prestigious JCB Award for his 2021 novel ‘The Plague Upon Us’, Shabir Ahmad Mir now brings a story of Kashmir replete with the land’s folktales: ‘The Last Knot’. Based in a Kashmir of 19th century but also a Kashmir of stories and legends, The Last Knot brings a gore-flecked reality of a tragedy […]
Living in a world where Artificial Intelligence is everywhere
Code Dependent: Living in the Shadow of AI by Madhumita Murgia dissects the ‘artificial’ of AI i.e. the artificial intelligence that’s rapidly taking over the world even as we breathe and eat and do other mundane, regular things. She traces this ‘artificial’ in a 3-D sort of way, turning inside out for her reader. For […]
36 weird Tales from the Mahabharata in Wendy Doniger’s book
In the content warning for ‘The Goddess of the River’, Vaishnavi Patel writes that Mahabharata has every terrible act ever imagined. In The Dharma of Unfaithful Wives and Faithful Jackals, Wendy Doniger lays this truth threadbare. Read this book, full of weird tales from the Mahabharata, with a sack of salt propped by your bedside […]
Where nature once sang: Loss and grief in Sheela Tomy’s Valli
Published originally in Malyalam, Valli is a climate fiction, told through the point of view various characters. It’s translated by Jayasree Kalathil, the joint winner of JCB 2020, along with S. Hareesh (Moustache). Valli and the mountains Do you remember these phrases? ‘The Mountains are calling/The mountains are calling and I must go.’ Valli is […]
Want to read climate fiction? Biopeculiar by Gigi Ganguly is the one
Although nothing is common in 22 stories of Biopeculiar by Gigi Ganguly, a speculative twist of the sub-genre of cli-fi (climate fiction), they are united by a strong undercurrent of empathy for the life around us. Life, not life. These stories carry a grain of empathy; Ganguly has embossed it into every word, every paragraph […]
Mahabharata on Red Bull. Reviewing the epic, Sons of Darkness
Sons of Darkness carries a soul that sings truly to its name. It abounds a darkness that subsumes all: deity or demon. An extensive retelling of Mahabharata, that great Hindu epic that’s been a fodder for authors every decade, Sons of Darkness is filled with characters who are either hiding something or tinkering with ethics. […]
The Goddess of River: Ganga takes the stage in Vaishnavi Patel’s second outing
The author of runaway global success Kaikeyi (a reimagination of much-maligned warrior queen from Ramayan) has chosen to tread on placid waters this time with The Goddess of River, moving her quill towards the tome set in the turbulent times of the Dwapar epoch, the one sandwiched between the idealistic Treta (when Ramayan takes place) […]
