Published by Vintage Books / Random House, 2008, 323 pages. A plane is parked on a runway, and a group of men is walking towards it. They include General Zia ul-Haq, the President of Pakistan; Arnold Raphael, the American Ambassador to Pakistan; and General Akhtar Abdur Rahman, the head of the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), Pakistan’s …
Continue reading A Case of Exploding Mangoes: Mohammed Hanif
Photo: Jerry Pinto Jerry Pinto is an Indian poet, writer and translator. His first novel, Em and the Big Hoom, won several awards, including The Hindu Literary Prize, the Sahitya Akademy Award, Crossword Book Award (Fiction) and the Windham-Campbell Literature Prizes (Fiction). His biography of the Bollywood actress, Helen: The Life and Times of an …
Continue reading Moving Easily Among Different Genres: An Interview with Jerry Pinto
Published by Tarapress, 2019, 176 pages. Suraiya Hasan Bose—Weaving a Legacy: Radhika Singh “Suraiya Hasan Bose is a name inscribed into the craft map of Andhra Pradesh. It speaks of a lifetime of passion and commitment to the cause of handloom from pre-Independence India to the present day.” This book pays tribute to Suraiya Hasan …
Continue reading Suraiya Hasan Bose—Weaving a Legacy: Radhika Singh
Published by Picador, 2020, 448 pages. Shuggie Bain is a compelling story about addiction and its fallout, set in the working-class community in Glasgow. Shuggie Bain’s mother Agnes is an alcoholic. Shuggie’s father Big Shug, a taxi driver, is Agnes’s second husband. She has two children, Catherine and Leek, from her first husband. Agnes and …
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
Photo: Diccon Bewes Diccon Bewes is a writer who was born in the UK but has lived in Switzerland for many years, and is now a Swiss citizen. His books include Slow Train to Switzerland, where he retraces the journey of Jemima Morrell who was part of Thomas Cook’s first tour of the country in …
Continue reading Travels through Switzerland: An Interview with Diccon Bewes
Published by Penguin, / Bantam Doubleday Dell / Everyman's Library / Oxford University Press, 1860, 719 pages. “There, in the middle of the broad, bright high-road—there, as if it had that moment sprung out of the earth or dropped from the heaven—stood the figure of a solitary Woman, dressed from head to foot in white …
Published by Random House, 2015, 335 pages. A performance of King Lear: the actor playing King Lear, Arthur Leander, is forgetting his lines and acting odd. He collapses with a heart attack. The curtain quickly comes down, Jeevan Chaudhary, a paramedic who happens to be in audience, rushes to help him. An ambulance is called, …
Published by Penguin, 2020, 400 pages. If you’re looking for a light read with a bit of murder thrown in, then look no further. Richard Osman has written a delightful whodunit, set in an upscale retirement village in the UK. Septuagenarians Joyce, Elizabeth, Ibrahim and Ron live at Coopers Chase, a retirement village. They form …
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