Ways of Dying: Stories & Essays is the sixth publication in the Aleph Olio series. Much like other works in the series such as Love and Lust, Notes from Hinterland, In a Violent Land, Ways of Dying is an ‘olio’ or miscellany of remarkable works of fiction and non-fiction, all of which harp on the sure companion of life: death.
Through the assemblage of works from renowned writers such as Amitav Ghosh, Mahasweta Devi, Ruskin Bond, George Orwell, Kolakaluri Enoch and others, the anthology traverses across multiple spatio-temporal geographies, with a few works rendered in translation. Through this, the collection explores not only the different ‘ways’ of dying, but also of remembering and re-presenting death. It harps as much on the ephemerality of life, and finality of death, as it does on the ethical and collective act of writing/reading, and through it, memorializing the bygone. Overall, a tenor of patient and poignant contemplation characterizes many of the works in this collection as it presents to us sketches from personal to public memory.