The path to the American dream is paved with nightmares in Indian-American filmmaker Sonejuhi Sinha’s Stray Dolls, which premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival last month. A moment stands out early on in the film. Una (Cynthia Nixon), the Polish owner of a motel in Poughkeepsie, is introducing Riz
Following its brief prologue, Tishani Doshi’s sprawling new novel Small Days and Nights opens by saying, “return is never the experience you hope for.” That idea is reinforced throughout the book in ways large and small, as its characters seek the illusory promises of homecoming. In particular, Grace, its
Loneliness and loss, the ways in which people perceive absence, and the choices that emanate from them are some of the themes filmmaker Sudipto Roy explores in his new film Kia and Cosmos. Truth and its potentially harmful and liberating qualities as well as the struggles of modern single parenting,
Ambiguity Machines and Other Stories, Vandana Singh’s latest collection of short stories, brings together thirteen previously published works and one new, haunting piece, 'Requiem', that serves as an exploration of language, climate change, and resistance. A finalist for the 2019 Philip K. Dick Award, the stories in
Easterine Kire’s new novel A Respectable Woman effortlessly weaves together generational family narratives with chapters of Nagaland’s tumultuous history, beginning with the Japanese invasion of Kohima during World War II. Through the eyes of a mother and daughter, this unflinching feminist work explores the lives of characters fighting
The Helter Skelter Anthology of New Writing: Volume Six. Helter Skelter Magazine's New Writing section was started in 2012 as a way to promote emerging writers and poets in India; to create a space for original, fresh short fiction and poetry.The first five volumes of New Writing
In January 2015, following intensifying protests against his book Madhorubhagan (tr. One Part Woman), Perumal Murugan declared his death as a writer. Poonachi, published in Tamil in 2016 and in English in 2018, is his first novel written since his dramatic declaration, marking his resurrection from self-imposed literary exile. In
It was the blood that had got Kabir interested in the man. Not the word but the stain on his letter. No one would believe him at first. Had he imagined it? Missing is Sumana Roy's debut novel (Purchase) The archives, especially the colonial archives, had been ordered
My father has been bald for the entirety of the time that I have known him. Modest Bengali mothers like to call their husbands “sunchho”, but my mother endearingly calls my father “takla” [bald man]. His bald patch glistens with sparse hair on the fringes and leaves him utterly conspicuous,
In his classic essay about walking in the city, French philosopher Michel de Certeau discussed the significance---both architectural and psychological---of vertical urban growth in modern societies, and the reasoning behind modern society’s obsession with skyscrapers. “The pedestrian’s elevation transforms him into a voyeur,” he wrote, “It transforms the
Things We Found During the Autopsy is the second short-fiction collection from Winnipeg-born, Bangalore resident Kuzhali Manickavel. Rather, perhaps ‘anti-fiction’ would be a better way to categorise this book. Things We Found During the Autopsy by Kuzhali Manickavel (Purchase) George P Elliott describes this genre well: “Anti-fiction may include a
Sujata Massey’s A Murder on Malabar Hill is the perfect kind of crime novel. At its centre is a cozy mystery that is extremely satisfying to its conclusion. And it is a social crime novel, which is best described by Dirk Gently’s maxim that to solve a crime,