Usha Raman is an Indian author and poet. She is also a Professor in the Department of Communication at the University of Hyderabad. Her first novel, Polite Conversations, was published in 2024. Her other books include Writing for the Media (2010); a collection of poems, All the Spaces in Between (2009); and a children’s book, …
Continue reading Breaking the Veil of Politeness: An Interview with Usha Raman
Published by Bloomsbury, 2020, 366 pages. “This was what it meant to be exiled and disinherited—to straddle closed borders, never whole anywhere.” “I know now that going from place to place is just something exiles have to do. Whatever the reason, the earth is never steady beneath our feet.” Nahr, a Palestinian woman, sits in …
Translated from Portuguese by Bruna Dantas LobatoPublished by Charco Press, 2024, 202 pages. Original version published in 2020. “Sometimes you’d have a thought and go to live inside it. Push everyone away. Build a house that way. Somewhere far. Deep inside yourself. That was how you dealt with things. These days, I choose to think …
Published by Penguin, 2001, 483 pages. The body of a young English woman is found in the Pettah—a disreputable part of Colombo, Sri Lanka. Not a place where you would wander around at night. So what was the young woman, Dorothy Bell, doing in the Pettah? Who killed her? Dorothy’s father, Reginald Bell, a wealthy …
Published by Orient BlackSwan, 2023, 148 pages. “Abid Hasan Safrani...was a quiet revolutionary who kept himself out of the limelight even while being present at every vital scene and moment of the final phase of our freedom struggle...”—Sugata Bose, Foreword First of all, full disclosure: Ismat Mehdi is my aunt. So this book is personal …
Translated from Japanese by Jim Rion.Published by Pushkin Vertigo, 2023, 348 pages. Original version published in 1973. Japan 1947. The end of the Second World War has resulted in social upheaval, and the aristocracy has lost its privileges, which earns it the moniker of the “sunset clan”. This novel is about one of these families. …
Translated from German by Daniel BowlesPublished by Serpent's Tail, 2024, 190 pages. Original version published in 2021. “So I shall go on a trip with her, I’d thought, and maybe it will be her last.” A man takes his 80-year-old mother for a trip around their native Switzerland, revisiting places from their past—and in the …
Published by Chatto & Windus, 2020, 124 pages “Dearly beloved, gathered here togetherin this closed drawer,fading now, I miss you.I miss the missing, those who left earlier.I miss even those who are still here.I miss you all dearly.Dearly do I sorrow for you.” “You can wander away. You can get lost.Words can do that.”—Dearly These …
Published by Margika—An NGO for Special Needs Children, 2022, 249 pages. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), one in four people faces challenges in the functioning of their body or mind. Many of them start experiencing these challenges— autism, for example, or a physical disability—before they are 25. However, this does not mean that …
Continue reading Mindscapes—A Canvas of Emotions in a Special World: Neena Rao
Published by Charco Press, 2022, 219 pages. “All of us are anything, everything, brimming with secrets. Above all we are the shelter we seek out in others and the safe havens we become for those we choose to love.” Amy and Zoe are sisters. Amy is older by three years and is very protective of …
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