Citadel of Love by Pratibha Ray was first written in Odiya as Silapama and is the winner of Odisha Sahitya Academy Award. Translated into English by Monalisa Jena, if there is one word that can describe the experience of reading this book, it is – brilliant! For one the book doesn’t read like a translation and therein lies the biggest achievement for Jena. As
Read moreI have always maintained that regional literature, like regional cinema, is what can enthrall and excite the minds of the story lovers; opening up new dimensions beyond the conventional genres. Thanks to translators and their tribe, the gems of vernacular languages are making way to mainstream publishing and what a pleasure they are on the reading senses. I have begun
Read moreEvery story is real, every reality is a story. I love translations possibly because so far all the translations I have read, be it Malayalam to English or Tamil to English or Bangla to English, all of them are superlative. Ghachar Ghochar by Vivek Shanbhag was originally written in Kannada and translated to English by Srinath Perur. There are times when
Read moreI got onto this book after reading the fantastic ‘Rokda‘ from the same publisher. I am in a phase where I am finding contemporary Indian history interesting, which is why I breezed through Shobha Bondre’s ‘Dhanda‘ in two days. Though I liked the book, it had two major flaws. One, except the Gujarati Mayor character, I had heard of none
Read moreWritten by a Brahmin mendicant (Vishnu Bhatt), who somehow fortuitously ended up being in parts of India where (and when) the revolt was breaking out, ‘1857‘ is a fantastic book chronicling the first great uprising of the Indian freedom struggle. Vishnu Bhatt wrote the book as a diary – which was published only after his death in the early 20th
Read moreSunil Gangopadhyay was one of the most prolific writers in Bangla. His books, over the decades, have enriched the readers and reached new heights of popularity. He is my favourite author, of course, having read almost all his novels since they came in periodical magazines with a lot of suspense between a week’s separation. Not only novels, Sunil Gangopadhyay was
Read moreMen, authors, books come and go and yet our country remains filled with angst ridden youth. Sankar’s Middleman is a Bengali novel translated to English and even though it chronicles the life of an unemployed young man in 1970’s Calcutta (as it was called then), it could well have been set in 2014 in any of our country’s cities. Somnath
Read moreIt is a recent habit of mine to read a book from the very beginning. A lucky thing, I felt as I started the poetry collection by Joy Goswami (translated so amazingly by Sampurna Chattarji). The 20 page foreword by Sampurna about Joy, his poetry and some snippets from his letters or various essays was a must and very meaningful
Read moreDamodar Mauzo is a Sahitya Akademi awardee, and a highly respected figure in Konkani Literature. And so, picking this book as one I really wanted to read and review was a no-brainer. “Short stories do not say this happened and this happened and this happened. They are a microcosm and a magnification rather than a linear progression.” ― Isobelle Carmody
Read moreThere are certain books with which you have love & hate relationships in the sense that they just don’t strike enough chord with you so as to grip you along through-out. At the same time, however, there remains something in the book which doesn’t let you leave it in between. Fitting perfectly in that canvas was Indian Tango by Ananda
Read moreDo you like short stories? What do you like about them? The fact that they are short? That they are stories? Not novellas? Or big giant novels? That more often than not, they just deliver a knockout punch smack on your face and disappear? Or, that they are like the cup of coffee early in the morning that makes your day
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