The Southasia Review of Books is a monthly newsletter that threads together our latest reviews and literary essays, curated reading suggestions on all things books-related from Himal’s extensive archive, as well as interviews with select writers and their reading recommendations.
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Hello reader,
Welcome to another edition of the Southasia Review of Books newsletter!
This month on the Southasia Review of Books podcast, I had a great conversation with the author Smriti Ravindra about her debut novel, The Woman Who Climbed Trees, a searing story about three generations of women that explores belonging, marriage, grief, desire, and the challenges faced by them in traditional societies across India and Nepal.
Among the most significant achievements of The Woman Who Climbed Trees is that it sheds light on the long-ignored topic of the Madhesi experience, particularly that of women, and we hope it serves as a starting point for more books on the topic.
“Unfortunately I don’t know of books in fiction that talk about the Madhesi experience, especially the female Madhesi experience in Nepal. That might just be my own ignorance, or it might be that there are just no books or the books are so few in number. That in itself, that the representation is so sparse and scarce, tells us of the Madhesi experience,” Smriti says in the interview. “Growing up, people did talk about the political issues of Madhesis in Nepal, but they were often male perspectives. But what women face, I don’t think was ever much of a conversation. But I hope this changes, and I hope I have the stamina and the courage required to write more of these kinds of books.”
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Recently I read The Wayward Daughter: A Kathmandu Story by Shradha Ghale (2018) and I thought it was a wonderful book that looks at the capital city of Kathmandu in the 1990s, and what life was like for people who lived there versus those who lived in the hills. It is very similar to what the Woman Who Climbed Trees talks about – the hill versus capital culture and about migration from a young girl’s point of view. I really enjoyed it.
Prajwal Parajuly’s The Land Where I Flee (2013), while not a Nepali book in the sense that it comes from Sikkim, very much talks about the India–Nepal connections. In fact, most of Prajwal’s books talk about that. So I would recommend this book for its acerbic humour and its deep sympathy for people who either cannot or refuse to fit in.
I would also recommend anything that Manjushree Thapa writes. Her Seasons of Flight (2010) is wonderful and it has a gorgeous central metaphor through which the story of a woman who is unable to shake herself free from her past is told.
Chuden Kabimo’s Song of the Soil (2021), translated from the Nepali by Ajit Baral, is another book I would recommend for its experimentation with language and form and its chilling story of hardships in the mountains.
Tune in to the full episode for more on these reading recommendations from Smriti Ravindra.
New Tamil literature in translation
The last decade has seen a wave of new Tamil literature in translation, opening these works up to a wider audience across Southasia and beyond.
The 2023 Sahitya Akademi Award winner Devibharathi’s novel, The Solitude of a Shadow (March 2024), translated from the Tamil by N Kalyan Raman, offers astute narratives on society and its overlapping hierarchies of caste, wealth and power.
Imayam, considered one of the most important Tamil writers today, has published three new works in translation. Layered with empathy and humour, his collection, Vazhga Vazhga and Other Stories, translated by Prabha Sridevan (December 2023), depicts the inequalities people face in present-day Tamil Nadu. His novel, I’m alive…for now (January 2024), also translated by Prabha Sridevan, explores the inner world of a family and their teenager’s battle with kidney disease. She and I, translated by D Venkataramanan (March 2024), is Imayam’s most recent work and tells a powerful story of widowhood and obsession.
In February, Penguin Random House India announced the acquisition of five works by the well-known contemporary Tamil writer Perumal Murugan. These stories have already garnered acclaim in Tamil literature and will now be accessible to a wider regional and global readership as Meena Kandasamy, Gita Subramanian, Kavitha Muralidharan and V Ishwarya undertake their translations for the first time.
Fresh short story collections from Bangladesh–India
The year 2024 brings us four major collections of short stories from Bangladesh and India.
Shah Tazrian Ashrafi’s debut, The Hippo Girl and Other Stories (February 2024), highlights what it is to be human in a world where rage, violence, grief, and obsession are part of everyday life in Bangladesh. The title short story, ‘The Hippo Girl’ was published as a part of our special series ‘Rethinking Bangladesh’ in 2021, and Ashrafi was selected as one of “the next generation of Southasian storytellers” for Himal’s Fiction Fest in June 2023.
The Penguin Book of Bengali Short Stories (March 2024), edited by Arunava Sinha, is a landmark new anthology of a century’s worth of Bengali literature in English, including many previously untranslated stories. The writers cover a wide range of issues from famine, caste, religious conflict, patriarchy, Partition, the Liberation War and more from across India and Bangladesh.
Written by a master of modern Bengali literature Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay and translated by Prasun Roy, The Devil’s Teacup and Other Ghost Stories (January 2024) delves into the paranormal and supernatural realm in a diverse collection of his chilling classics.
We’re also looking forward to the publication of The Meat Market (April 2024), a novella and ten short stories by the Bangladeshi writer Mashiul Alam and translated by Shabnam Nadiya. The collection’s stories promise to “hold up a mirror to Bangladeshi society” and “disrupt social complacency”. Alam’s short story ‘Milk’ (Doodh), also translated by Shabnam Nadiya, first appeared as the winner of Himal’s 2o19 Short Story Competition.
What can Southasian scholars gain from Indian Ocean studies?
Thinking across the early modern era and into the present, Southasia has been a focal point within the Indian Ocean with respect to labour migrations of indentured workers or the movement of soldiers, settlers and merchants.
A wave of recent scholarship on the Indian Ocean provides a new way of looking at the Subcontinent’s pasts. The growing list includes Sanjay Subrahmanyam’s Across the Green Sea: Histories from the Western Indian Ocean, 1440-1640 (March 2024); Empires of the Sea: A Human History of the Indian Ocean World by Radhika Seshan (February 2024); Boats in a Storm: Law, Migration, and Decolonization in South and Southeast Asia, 1942–1962 by Kalyani Ramnath (August 2023); The Briny South: Displacement and Sentiment in the Indian Ocean World by Nienke Boer (February 2023); and Darshana M Baruah’s forthcoming title, The Contest for the Indian Ocean: And the Making of a New World Order (August 2024).
Together, these new Indian Ocean histories reveal the various modes of exploitation, warfare, colonisation and nation-formation that occurred in maritime Southasia and how it carries on being a space of geopolitical flashpoints and state ambitions.
In Southasia, graphic novels have grown as a significant medium of storytelling, finding distinct voices and an ever-expanding readership in the region and abroad. These graphic narratives often also pursue difficult topics, engage critically with politics and have even brought taboo subjects to light.
This month I read one such graphic novel: The Pig Flip, written and illustrated by Joshy Benedict and translated from the Malayalam by KK Muralidharan.
Pannimalathu, or Pig Flip, is a popular card game played in villages of Kerala, and the graphic novel draws from Benedict’s own experience watching gamblers in his village lose themselves and their money to it. Through the protagonist Babycha, Benedict paints a compelling story of addiction, family life and Kerala’s gambling underworld. And I hope to see more graphic narratives in translation from Southasian languages in the future.
In honour of the upcoming Dalit History Month, I also started reading Baluta by the poet and writer Daya Pawar and translated from the Marathi by Jerry Pinto (2015). Widely considered as the first Dalit autobiography (1978), the book describes the caste atrocities and the collective struggle of the Mahar community in the 1940s and 1950s across Mumbai and rural Maharashtra.
The book it reminded me most of is Salavaan (2023) by the Tamil writer Pandiyakannan, the first novelist from the Kuravar community, which offers an intimate portrait of the lives of manual scavengers. (Read Ashik Kahina’s review essay on the book for Himal here.) Both books depict a true picture of Dalit life in all its dimensions and are significant contributions to Southasian literature.
What should I read next? Tell me about the books you read this month or any books you’re currently reading. Write to me at shwethas@himalmag.com.
Until next time, happy reading!
Shwetha Srikanthan
Assistant Editor, Himal Southasian