It’s that time of year when self-help books promising to help us get fit, get healthy, be happy dominate the bestseller lists and we’re bombarded by ‘New Year, New You’ slogans leaving us feeling short changed; pondering a life that might have been if only we’d been brave enough to take a leap. The truth …
Review: Table Manners
This is a great collection filled with moments of real tenderness and surprise. A servant eavesdrops on her mistress’s unfolding affair with a cousin. A parrot speaks the words of a wife’s dead husband like he named her loss. A grandmother comes to terms with her granddaughter’s pregnancy. Bhattacharya’s characters span the globe, from Venice …
10 reasons to attend The Asian Writer Festival 2018
We’re book-ending our tenth birthday with an all-day festival on Saturday October 20th 2018 at The Wesley in London. The Asian Writer will once again bring together the contents of its website – interviews, masterclasses and features on literary trends – in a live format. The festival aims to support and encourage writers, by offering advice and inspiration …
Review: Best Asian Short Stories
Short stories are meant to be read as just that – a solitary, self-contained story. Something one can pick up without much commitment, a quick rendezvous in the backseat of a cab, a snack between meals. Which is why, when reading the selection of tales featured in The Best Asian Short Stories, it was a …
Amer Anwar: It’s taken more than ten years to get my book published
I’ve wanted to write a novel since I was 16. Even though teachers and lecturers knew I could write well, none ever suggested writing as a possible career. Perhaps being Asian, from a single parent, working class background, they thought the possibility of me being a writer was a bit far fetched? There weren’t any …
Subjunctive Moods by CG Menon
CG Menon’s debut collection Subjunctive Moods, is published by Dahlia Press and the predominant mood of it could be what the last story “Rock pools,” poetically describes as ‘our throbbing darkness and our gleeful knowledge of what we lack.’ The characters in this collection have been analysed with almost mathematical precision, to pinpoint and expose …
Vaseem Khan: How to create compelling characters
Early on in my writing career I attempted to write a police procedural featuring a lead character that was British Asian. Scouring the shelves of bookshops, I thought I had discovered a gap in the market. What hadn’t occurred to me at the time was that the reason I saw no such characters on the …
Savita Kalhan: Reflecting realities in Children’s book publishing
It is universally acknowledged that it is important for children to see themselves reflected in the books they read. It is also important for children to read about other cultures, backgrounds, and communities. It promotes understanding, tolerance, acceptance and empathy. We all know this. Dr. Melanie Ramdarshan Bold’s study, reported by Alison Flood in the …
All the Fabulous Beasts by Priya Sharma
I first had the pleasure of reading Priya Sharma’s work when I was a judge for the British Fantasy Awards in 2016, where she won Best short story for her tale “Fabulous Beasts” and I’ve been hooked ever since. So it was with bated breath that I waited for my copy of her debut collection …
Rangan Chatterjee
Dr Rangan Chatterjee never set out to write a book but following his hit TV show, Doctor in the House, he had significant interest from publishers. The 4 Pillar Plan is Dr Chatterjee’s blueprint for how to live well in the modern world. It divides health into four pillars; diet, sleep, movement and relaxation. Dr …