Raising the profile of South Asian writers since 2007
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
Mahsuda Snaith’s mesmerising first novel The Things We Thought We Knew is a story full of twists and turns that blurs the lines between reality, memory and imagination. Eighteen year-old Ravine Roy has been bed-bound due to chronic pain syndrome for the last eleven years. From her bed, Ravine describes the Leicester council estate where …
by Nilopar Uddin A damp evening in Manchester’s Dean Street, and Waterstones is brimming with eager faces. Speaking to the women sitting around me, I realise that Mohsin Hamid is something of a rockstar literati; this room is packed with fans who exhibit the effervescent excitement of groupies. Hamid, whose writings has been variously described …
What are the experiences of a generation born to immigrant parents in the UK? A collection of personal essays edited by Nikesh Shukla and crowdfunded via Unbound explore race in Britain through the eyes of a new wave of creatives: actors, poets, artists and novelists. This smorgasbord of opinion and experiences is refreshing. Each writer …
I admit I was reluctant to pick up A. A. Dhand’s debut novel, Streets of Darkness, even more so, to pen this review. I’ve dipped my toe into the genre of crime fiction before only to find the writing didn’t appeal or to lose myself literally in all the action. But having published Dhand’s blog, …
The novel Jasmine by Bharati Mukherjee, first published in 1989, is one that is primarily interested in the discussion of immigration experience in the United States. Though utilising fantasy elements in the narrative, the story tells a harrowing tale of the protagonist Jyoti and the challenges she faces in assimilating into American society. The novel …
by James Wilkinson Sleeping on Jupiter by Anuradha Roy, is a beautiful yet heavy piece of literature and one that should not be taken as a tool for escapism. Though the description of the landscape is lush, be warned: underneath this façade of beauty is a temple town riddled with an erring history, host to …