The stories of miracle-working Sufi saints (pirs) have circulated in the Bangla-speaking world for most of the past millennium. They are romances filled with wondrous marvels, where tigers talk, rocks float and waters part, and faeries carry a sleeping Sufi holy man into the bedroom of a Hindu princess with whom the god of fate, Bidhata, has ordained his marriage.
A series of standalone stories featuring a precocious young boy from provincial Odisha, Pattanaik’s The Life and Times of Banka Harichandan delicately maps the contours of growing up. The bookis not children’s literature per se.
The book opens with the title story ‘Along with the Sun’ by SA Tamilselvan, the sad-yet-sweet story of Mari who dreams of marrying her uncle according to the custom of her caste.
Dom Moraes’ book, Where Some Things are Remembered, combines a reporter’s inner voice and a whole literary arsenal of epithets
The genre of crime writing, as readers are well aware, is a diverse one. The very fact of variety of (sub-)genres—in terms of, for instance, contexts, types/categories, sources and modes of investigation—makes crime writing a complex but highly exciting and vibrant literary field.
Every once in a while, a book comes along that challenges us to rethink our reading affiliations and affections and realign them to reflect the Protean hues of the real and imaginary worlds we inhabit. This delightful offering from Hachette