Translated from Portuguese by Helena Cavendish de Moura with Andrew Michael BrownPublished in a bilingual edition by Casa Forte Press, 2017, 123 pages. Original version published in 2017. Lula Falcão is an award-winning journalist, political advocate and writer. His criticism of the current President Jai Bolsonaro has landed him on the list of “intellectuals to …
Continue reading Vultures in the Living Room and Other Stories: Lula Falcão
Translated from Polish by Jennifer CroftPublished by Fitzcarraldo Editions, 2018, 416 pages. Original version published in 2007. “Clearly I did not inherit whatever gene it is that makes it so that when you linger in a place you start to put down roots. I’ve tried, a number of times but my roots have always been …
Selected and translated from Urdu by M. Asaduddin with additional translations by Ralph RussellPublished by Penguin, 2001, 261 pages. “In my stories, I’ve put down everything with objectivity. Now, if people find them obscene, let them go to hell. It’s my belief that experiences can never be obscene if they are based on authentic realities …
Continue reading Lifting the Veil: Selected Writings of Ismat Chugtai
Published by Mantle, 2020, 240 pages. This is an intriguing collection of short stories, many of them set in the 1800s. A doctor finds himself blanking out regularly. The seizure is heralded by the smell of chestnuts. When he comes to, he finds that, instead of passing out, he had carried on with what he …
Continue reading A Registry of My Passage Upon the Earth: Daniel Mason
Translated from Hebrew by Sondra Silverston, Nathan Englander, Jessica Cohen, Miriam Shlesinger and Yardenne GreenspanPublished by Riverhead Books, 2019, 209 pages. Original version published in 2018. A child encourages a man to jump off the top of a building, believing that the man is a superhero and will fly. A man keeps the compacted wreck …
Published by Amaryllis, 2017, 132 pages. The short stories in this collection capture the small but seismic shifts in a person’s life: the distraction of a tutor whose wife has left him; the regret of a woman who has walked out of her marriage of 30 years; and a woman realizing that her dream house …
Continue reading The Ayah and Other Stories: Chanis Fernando-Boisard
The Inner Courtyard: Stories by Indian Women, edited by Lakshmi HolmströmPublished by Rupa & Company, 1992, 228 pages.In Other Words: New Writing by Indian Women, selected by Urvashi Butalia and Ritu MenonPublished by T.H.E. Women's Press Ltd. / South Asia Books, 1995, 196 pages. “Women in India have traditionally been tellers of tales. They have …
Translated from Japanese by Philip Gabriel and Ted GoosenPublished by Random House / Bond Street Books, 2017, 240 pages. Original version published in 2014. “Here's what hurts the most," Kafuku said. "I didn't truly understand her—or at least some crucial part of her. And it may well end that way now that she's dead and …
Published by Vintage, 1944, 336 pages. I haven’t read Virginia Woolf for decades, and I had forgotten just how well she writes. I had bought this collection of her short stories in the 1980s, and it was one of the many books I had left behind in my parents’ house when I moved. It has …
Continue reading A Haunted House and Other Stories: Virginia Woolf
Review by Sadhana RamchanderPublished by Saptaparni, 2017, 72 pages. In 2016, when Anuradha Gunupati and I met 83-year old Abburi Chayadevi to tell her about our plans to publish a book on her writing and craft, she asked, “Why do we need this book? I am already suffering from fame.” I was delighted to find …
Continue reading Abburi Chayadevi (1933-2019): A writer who never stopped asking questions
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