By Atharva Pandit
HURDA
2023
2023
Hurda is a riveting read. Three young children—sisters, the eldest among them aged 14, are missing and subsequently found dead. They are survived by a poor family of three:
Reviewed by: Jigyasa Sogarwal
By Nguyen Phan Que Mai
DUST CHILD
2023
2023
Wars are terrible tragedies. Especially like in Vietnam where it was pointless, just ‘a senseless blunder’. The dramatic flexing of the American muscles to prevent the ‘domino theory’, that if one nation turned Communist, it would likely influence other nations to the same end, is a misguided thought, although strongly backed by American presidents. It is a reflection of their exaggerated national fears and geopolitical strategies.
Reviewed by: Sumitra Kannan
Edited by Arunava Sinha
THE GREATEST INDIAN STORIES EVER TOLD: FIFTY MASTERPIECES FROM THE NINETEENTH CENTURY TO THE PRESENT
2023
2023
Arunava Sinha’s The Greatest Indian Stories Ever Told is an ocean resounding narrative themes and linguistic expressions that spread across centuries.
Reviewed by: Suman Bhagchandani
By Ipshita Chanda
LIVING IN AIR
2022
2022
Living in Air, a collection of seventeen stories by Ipshita Chanda, opens with the story ‘Wings’, an ode to the 18th century Urdu poet Mah Laqa Bai Chanda from Hyderabad
Reviewed by: Divya Shankar
By Sukrita
Word-induced silence makes witnessing both horrifying and lyrical, and it alters the understanding of the universe of emotions more profoundly, bringing in multi-layered, untold, exotic moments of epiphany.
Reviewed by: Shafey Kidwai
By Mitali Chakravarty
Chakravarty’s Introduction comes with another poem in which she writes about angsanas that bloomed on trees and orioles ‘magicked out of the unseen leaves’. To her, they stand for the innocence of childhood.
Reviewed by: Lakshmi Kannan