The Home of British Asian Writing
reviewed by Jane Wallace There is more than one bad character in this darkly beautiful novel: the term could equally be applied to the city that forms its backdrop, Delhi, as well as the love interest to which it ostensibly refers. With her mother deceased and her estranged father living in Singapore, twenty-year old Idha is …
Zarqa Nawaz has carved a career out of ‘writing the funny.’ She created hit show, Little Mosque on the Prairie, the first of its kind to put Muslims on Canadian TV. Her memoir, Laughing All the Way to the Mosque, published last month, captures the realities and absurdities of life for a practicing Muslim woman …
It was after a horrific accident that journalist, Radhika Sanghani turned her hand to writing fiction. Sanghani wrote her first book, Virgin, a 21 year old’s mission to lose her virginity in a month, during her recovery from a coach crash. She was suffering from post traumatic stress and needed to do something positive. ‘I spent a …
by David Parker In March 2013 I stood up as Executive Director of the Man Asian Literary Prize (MALP) to introduce the Prize-giving Ceremony at what had become our usual venue in the Peninsula, Hong Kong, one of Asia’s most famous and historic hotels. At that moment there was a lot to reflect on. The …
Q. Your novel, A Bad Character took me in as soon as I read the first page. I couldn’t stop reading. Where did the protagonist, Idha’s, voice come from? It’s hard to say with any certainty. At first I was going to say: I don’t know, because it happened that I had a year where …
If you thought 2014 was a great year for fiction, check out these titles out in 2015.
reviewed by Divya Dubey Bani Basu is one of the most prolific writers in Bengal and a recipient of the Tarashankar Award forAntarghaat (Treason), and the Ananda Purashkar forMaitreya Jataka. She has also received the Sushila Devi Birla Award and the Sahitya Setu Puraskar. It is a pity that her work has not been more widely translated. …
reviewed by Nigel Collett Two poets bestrode the cultural life of the Hindu and Muslim communities of India before Partition: for the Hindus, Rabindranath Tagore, the Bengali sage; for the Muslims, Allama Sir Muhammad Iqbal, a Punjabi Muslim of Kashmiri descent. Tagore won the Nobel Prize for literature, was knighted (though he returned his knighthood …
reviewed by Divya Dubey The Golden Pigeon, Shahid Siddiqui’s debut work of fiction, is best described not so much as a historical novel but as a historical fantasy. Using the contradictions faced by Muslims in post-Partition India as the foundation of his story, the author has layered in elements of magic realism: his is a …
Kalki is a wild, exciting, mysterious , 15 year old girl. She is also, possibly, the 10th incarnation of the Hindu god Vishnu. But now she has gone missing and her two best friends – who had not met her until she appeared a week ago – must try and explain to the police exactly …