My new column is up at Bookslut. It was with some trepidation that I approached the hallowed topic of Bangla literature. Here is an excerpt: “Neither of them noticed that the period in which husband and wife rediscover each other in the exquisite first light of love—that gold-tinged dawn of conjugal life—had slipped silently into [...]
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Dear Readers, Chapati Mystery is launching a new flash fiction contest, which might just happen one time or might become an OVERNIGHT SENSATION or even a TRADITION. For the first contest, we solicit entries inspired by the following tweet sent out by @polgrim on the occasion of Hosni Mubarak’s removal from the office of President [...]
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I also have a review out today on Bookslut of long-time CM reader Teju Cole‘s superb new novel Open City. The novel comes out tomorrow. Everyone must read it! An excerpt from my review: The review materials I received with Open City ask me to compare Cole’s writing to that of W.G. Sebald or J.M. [...]
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Following my interviews with Blafters Rakesh Khanna, Pritham K. Chakravarthy and Kuzhali Manickavel, my review of a number of books from the Chennai-based publishing house Blaft is up on Bookslut today. Here is an excerpt: He was a dark man, with white hair and white teeth. A thick moustache covered his dark lips. His chin [...]
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Everybody knows who Yara Sofia is in Puerto Rico. And if you don’t, then sorry darling, this is not your world. –One of Kuzhali Manickavel’s favorite quotes from Ru Paul’s Drag Race, Season 3. For the past few months I’ve been up to my earlobes in Blaft Publications. Last week (?) I posted an interview [...]
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My review of a whole raft of Blaft publications comes out in the February issue of Bookslut. In the meantime, I’ll be posting some interviews with prominent Blaft personages. Here is the first: an interview with Rakesh Khanna, co-founder and editor of Blaft, and Pritham K. Chakravarthy, translator for The Blaft Anthology of Tamil Pulp [...]
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My new column on translation, transcreation and Qurratulain Hyder’s two English renderings of her novels is up on Bookslut today. As you will see from the text, I decided to approach the two texts without reading the Urdu first, for reasons that should be clear in my discussion. Now I am reading Aag ka Dariya, [...]
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In December, it is the custom of taste-makers everywhere to create lists of the ten best things of the year. Taste-makers, aware that they will be called upon to perform this task, work hard throughout the year winnowing through possible entries into this category so they will be prepared by December to do their duty [...]
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My new December column is up on Bookslut. There’s so much more to say about this book, and I will have write more in the coming days, but for now, here is an excerpt: I read War and Peace a number of years ago in Allahabad, India, in March or April, when the temperatures begin [...]
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My post for the November issue of Bookslut goes up today. Here it is below, excerpted in full. The conversation has just begun, so please do join in the comments section. I. Polemics Years ago, when I was engaged in the pursuit of the Hindi PhD that I now have, I was approached for an [...]
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“Translation for me stems from two different but interrelated impulses: a good text matures for the reader with every reading, reveals itself gradually—call it literary striptease. I can delve into it only through extended togetherness. Translation makes it possible to tease out all I can through this prolonged intimacy. The other insatiable impulse is to [...]
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My new column, a review of Granta 112 (“the Pakistan issue”) is up on Bookslut. Here’s an excerpt: Green is the theme color in the Shahzads’ bedroom. The curtains pick up the tone of the bed linens, and a bamboo print hung between the windows extends the botanical motif. “There was nothing out of the [...]
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I have a new column at Bookslut. The title of my column comes to you courtesy of Sepoy. Here’s the link. The column is meant to introduce readers to South Asian literature beyond the Barnes and Noble display tables. The first installment is a review of India: A Traveler’s Literary Companion, edited by Chandrahas Choudhury. [...]
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Tennessee resident Gary Middleton worries that the mosque could house extremists. “It’s just another mosque, training kids to be terrorist,” he said. Stan Whiteway also objects to a new mosque for local Muslims. “I’m sorry, but they seem to be against everything that I believe in. So I don’t want them necessarily in my neighborhood,” [...]
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Some of you may be old enough to remember a letter to an academic journal that Sepoy posted last February. Below, I furnish the piece of writing in question for those who are curious. The article, on the portrayal of terrorists in Indian cinema, was written in 2002. It was, I like to think, fresh [...]
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In February, I posted a review of Amitava Kumar’s novel Home Products. That self-same book, with minor revisions, is now out from Duke University Press under the title Nobody Does the Right Thing. Below is an excerpt from the review; to read the whole thing, click here. This past week, some years after hearing Amitava [...]
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An essay by Daisy Rockwell. Har qatl di e jar zan zamin zar Three things for which we kill– Land, women and gold. Punjabi proverb (quoted at the beginning of Daniyal Mueenuddin’s In Other Rooms, Other Wonders) I. Gold They have not the foggiest idea that they cannot tame him. Such a man belongs to [...]
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Díaz, Junot. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. New York: Riverhead Books, 2007. I. Comix For the record, that summer our girl caught a cuerpazo so berserk that only a pornographer or a comic-book artist could have designed it with a clear conscience. Every neighborhood has its tetúa, but Beli could have put them [...]
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I’ve never really written anything outside of this house. I wrote a very thick Ph.D. thesis for Allahabad University, but I couldn’t have actually written it there. I would collect everything and come back home to write. Suppose I have a story to write and I’ve gone out of town for a couple of days: [...]
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Dear Mr. Nanga Fakir, We’re writing to let you know that the Committee for the Haminder Subah Sath Mehmil Memorial Foundation Annual Chapati Fellowship has met. After reviewing a very strong pool of thousands of international applicants, your dossier was chosen as the winning application. The Committee was particularly impressed with your strong commitment to [...]
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