📚 Southasia Review of Books - June 2024
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📚 26 June 2024
Hello reader,
Welcome to another edition of the Southasia Review of Books newsletter!
Southasian fiction in translation is having its moment. But what do we want the future of translation to be? What has worked, what are the things we need to go to the next level and how do we guide it to that place?
This was our topic of conversation at Himal’s Fiction Fest 2024 panel discussion featuring the prize-winning translators Daisy Rockwell, Musharraf Ali Farooqi and Jayasree Kalathil, as well as the leading literary agent Kanishka Gupta.
We also had special readings from the 2024 Armory Square Prize for South Asian Literature in Translation finalists. Huge congratulations to the prize winner, Sana R Chaudhry, for her translation from Urdu of the Pakistani writer Fahmida Riaz’s final novel, Qila-e-Faramoshi or Fortress of the Forgotten Ones.
Be sure to check out all the translated stories from Himal’s 2024 Fiction Fest on our website. In case you missed the event, you can watch the translators’ readings of these stories and the panel discussion here.
In this month’s Southasia Review of Books podcast episode, I had a fantastic conversation with Siddhartha Deb!
His recent novel, The Light at the End of the World begins and ends in a dystopian future of authoritarianism and climate disaster, and blurs the lines between realism and speculative fiction. It captures the puzzle of contradictions that is modern India today, and traces it back to the many moments of apocalypse in the Subcontinent’s history.
In his latest collection of essays, Twilight Prisoners: The Rise of the Hindu Right and the Fall of India, Siddhartha paints a damning picture of these darkest of turns in India’s recent past. It is a powerful exploration of the rise of Hindu Nationalism and its impact on dissenting voices and marginalised communities. And most importantly, it’s a timely reminder that those who resisted and are resisting – India’s twilight prisoners if you will – are not forgotten.
Take a look below for a special reading list curated by Siddhartha Deb on fiction and nonfiction that reflect India’s current political moment.
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📚 From the podcast, Siddhartha Deb’s reading recommendations on fiction and nonfiction that reflect India’s current political moment
“In terms of fiction, I would mention Devika Rege’s Quarterlife, which has received a lot of attention recently, and Anjum Hasan’s History’s Angel – these all came at the same time as my novel. A slightly older title I would mention is the Kashmiri writer Feroz Rather’s The Night of Broken Glass, which is a collection of stories set in Kashmir.
In terms of nonfiction, I would say Akshaya Mukul’s Gita Press and the Making of Hindu India is a must read for understanding the current political moment. I would also mention Dhirendra Jha’s biography of Nathuram Godse, Gandhi’s Assassin: The Making of Nathuram Godse and His Idea of India.
The third nonfiction book, which I think is a must read, is Sujatha Gidla’s Ants Among Elephants. It is a memoir, but also an incredible social history of the Dalit experience, the Indian Left, but also Indian history. It is seen as a memoir because it is very much a personal story, but it is also an incredible intellectual history of India’s past, and also a political driver in a way.
I could go on, there are a lot of other good books, but I think these are good starting points.”
📚 Reviews from Himal’s pages this month
📚 This month in Southasian publishing
Celebrating Southasian literature
Congratulations (again!) to V V Ganeshananthan on winning the Women’s Prize for Fiction 2024 for her unforgettable novel, Brotherless Night (January 2023).
In an interview for The Guardian, Sugi said, “One of the things that the book is also attempting to do is decentre narrative authority a little bit: don’t read just one book about Sri Lanka, please consider two, three even,” she laughs. “Don’t be a person who reads one book.” Tune in to our SaRB conversation with Sugi for her excellent reading recommendations on women’s writing on the Sri Lankan civil war.
We’re also thrilled for Vajra Chandrasekera, whose The Saint of Bright Doors (July 2023) has won the Locus Award for first novel. This is the third award win for Vajra’s excellent debut, following the William L Crawford Fantasy Award and the Nebula Award for best novel, out of six+ nominations. His second novel, Rakesfall (June 2024), is also out this month!
As Vajra notes, he is perhaps the “first Sri Lankan, South Asian, and resident third-world writer to ever win a Crawford, Nebula, or Locus novel award, separately or together.” There have been incredible works coming out of the region in the last few decades, and most of them get very little attention in global platforms. But we hope these wins for Southasian fiction will pave the way for positive changes on this front.
Revisit Gautam Bhatia’s essay for Himal on how The Saint of Bright Doors is part of an extraordinary recent burst of anglophone SF writing from Sri Lanka.
Reckoning with Southasian fantasy
“Why won’t the Left reckon with fantasy?”, Siddhartha Deb asked in this month’s SaRB podcast conversation. In India and in the West, fantasy, myths and conspiracies are often the terrain of the Right or of market capitalism. But over the last decade or so, the modern Southasian fantasy genre is undergoing a reappraisal of sorts, with imaginative critiques of empire, religion and capitalism.
Along these lines, more and more Southasian writers of fantasy are penning exciting new stories set in the region and beyond. From a growing lineup of new Southasian fantasy novels out in 2024, a few titles include Taran Matharu’s Dragon Rider (April 2024), The Lotus Empire by Tasha Suri (November 2024), Heir by Sabaa Tahir (October 2024) and Prashanth Srivatsa’s The Spice Gate (July 2024).
Centering stories of Sherpas
Sherpas, local guides and porters have contributed so much to Himalayan climbing for over a century, yet their achievements and the terrible human cost they suffer are still largely overlooked. Giving voice to local climbers from Tibet, Pakistan, Nepal and India who have helped people tackle the world’s highest peaks, a wave of new books aim to share their histories, perspectives, present-day realities, and fully acknowledge and celebrate their achievements.
Nandini Purandare and Deepa Balsavar’s The Sherpa Trail: Stories from Darjeeling and Beyond (April 2024) and Headstrap: Legends and Lore from the Climbing Sherpas of Darjeeling (April 2024), Mark Powell’s Step by Step: The Biography of Pemba Gelje Sherpa (March 2024), Alpine Rising: Sherpas, Baltis, and the Triumph of Local Climbers in the Greater Ranges by Bernadette McDonald (February 2024) and Everest, Inc.: The Renegades and Rogues Who Built an Industry at the Top of the World by Will Cockrell (April 2024) are among the new additions to literature on mountaineering that attempt to centre Sherpa communities.
📚 What I’m Reading
In 2013 Madhumita Dutta, a doctoral student then, went to do research in Kancheepuram in Tamil Nadu. There she met Abhinaya, Lakshmi, Pooja, Satya and Kalpana – a group of women working at an electronics factory. In the women’s rented room, they gathered regularly, drank tea, chatted and produced a radio podcast called the Mobile Girls Koottam.
This month, I read Dutta’s book, Mobile Girls Koottam: Working Women Speak (November 2021) – a compilation of these audacious conversations. The book, brought to life through Madhushree Basu’s illustrations, offers a layered narrative of the lives, dreams, frustrations of migrant women in their own words.
The conversations are both perceptive and witty. Here the ‘Mobile girls’ rebel against lazy categorisations of women migrant workers and give us a glimpse into their everyday acts of challenging a patriarchal society. With topics varying from menstruation to ideas of a feminist tea shop, from housework to vignettes of life on the factory floor, the book is an important intervention in thinking about women’s work in contemporary India today.
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