Our city this year, Geetanjali Shree, translated from Hindi by Daisy Rockwell
A city is on the brink of chaos. A society is divided along lines of belief and ideology. A playground becomes a battlefield. A threatening silence grips the public.
Against this backdrop, Shruti, a writer paralysed by the weight of events, tries to find her words, while Sharad and Hanif, academics whose voices are drowned out by extremism, find themselves caught between cliches and government slogans. And there is Daddu, Sharad’s father, a beacon of hope in the gathering darkness. As they all wrestle with the thought of speaking the unspeakable, a nameless narrator takes on the urgent task of bearing witness.
A Bouquet of Dead Flowers: StoriesSwadesh Deepak, translated from Hindi by Jerry Pinto, Pratik Kanjilal, Nirupama Dutt and Sukant Deepak
Swadesh Deepak is one of the most uncompromising modern Hindi fiction writers. His disturbing stories have a profound ability to offer a scathing critique of society and bureaucracy, but also to overturn the usual male stereotypes found in much of the literature of our time.
The little boy in “Hunger,” scavenging for scraps of food at the railway station, is pleasantly bewildered one day by the generosity of the warehouse guards when his sister comes along. The Prime Minister’s impending visit to their small town in “No News of Untoward Events” is too disruptive for the residents to cause much fuss. In “Name a Tree, Any Tree,” the headstrong Maya Bakhshi cannot understand her family’s kindness to Major Ajay Singh until she does and the ground slips out from under her feet. Sunila falls in love with the disturbingly quiet Sukant, who goes mad every time it snows, in “Horsemen.” There is an unspoken tension between Naveen and Nimmi in “Dead End,” but the generous hosts of the hotel they have come to at this unusual time of year could never guess why. And in “The Child God,” the Pandit and his family find out just how depraved they can be.
The day the earth blossomedManoj Kuroor, translated from Malayalam by J Devika
The Paanar live near forests but do not know how to hunt. Behind their huts there are fields of millet, but they are not used to sowing or harvesting. The eldest son, Mayilan, is fed up with making a living from singing and dancing and the poverty that comes with it and runs away from home. Many years later, his family sets out to find him. As they travel through the country, they perform in village squares and palaces, before farmers and cowherds, famous kings and even more famous poets.
Settled seventeen centuries ago, The day the earth blossomed tells the interwoven stories of Columban, his daughter Chithira and his son Mayilan, drawing on famous poems of classical Tamil. The result is an electrifying and haunting link to the past.
Our bones in your neckMegha Rao
When Esai arrives at St. Margaret’s imposing campus, surrounded by the mysterious forest, she plunges headlong into a world of power games, underground concerts, new enemies and complicated relationships. And then Esai is lured into the arms of something far more dangerous and exciting. – a water spirit lurking in the foliage. She stumbles upon an ancient secret that threatens to destroy the entire college to its core. Esai knows something the others don’t. She finds herself at the center of the unrest brewing on campus, alongside Scheher. Scheher, once her only friend, is now a formidable face of the opposition. What happens when those you once fought for turn against you?
The continents in betweenBani Basu, translated from Bengali by Debali Mookerjea-Leonard
As immigrants Sudeep and Kamalika look over their shoulders at the homeland they left behind, they are filled with a sense of permanent nostalgia. This is 1960s America, and it throws up all the challenges and uncertainties they face while raising their more American children in a conventional Bengali household.
The menstrual coupé, Shahina K Rafiq, translated from Malayalam by Priya K Nair
In Shahina Rafiq’s carefully crafted stories, women fantasize about ghosts and murders, delve into hidden worlds and try to gain control over their lives. They leave behind the boredom of housewife roles and the frustration with husbands and fathers, travel, stick together like migratory birds and poke fun at the imposing patriarchal world.
