The Home of British Asian Writing
Q. Tell us about your debut novel, The Normal State of Mind? The Normal State of Mind is a story of love and friendship. The story revolves around the friendship between Dipali, a widow and Moushumi, a lesbian, and the issues they face in their lives. It is set in 1990s India, the time around …
Many years ago, DIPNET ran a poll on their website. It asked visitors ‘Is publishing a white, middle class ghetto?’ with the overall majority result always in favour of yes. I remember it well because the poll was on the site for about a year, and nor the site nor the poll ever seemed to …
by Adrienne Loftus Parkins To paraphrase George Santayana, those who do not learn about history are doomed to repeat its mistakes. This phrase kept coming to mind when reading two novels recently. Damon Galgut’s Arctic Summer and A Season for Martyrs by Bina Shah both take past events as their themes. Both are fascinating character …
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 …
On arriving at HeHo, the nearest airport to Inle, we were met by Major who took us straight to their pier and our boat for the journey to the monastery. A sense of calm befell me. I felt I was back where I belonged. The hustle and bustle of Yangon and the trials and tribulations felt a …
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 Jacqui Lofthouse Is there such a thing as a ‘mistake’ in writing? It’s a curious question, as of course, there’s no such thing as the ‘perfect’ work of fiction and so it follows that everyone makes mistakes in their writing, all the time. However, the more obvious mistakes most often occur in a first …
by Adrienne Loftus Parkins Every few years, the question of stereotyping in Asian literature comes up for discussion. Many British Asian writers feel that publishers try to push them to write about post colonial stereotypes of their community – arranged marriages, conflict between traditional and modern values, the search for identity. Cultural stereotyping is 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 …