Usha and her husband Om are part of a Gujarati community in Coimbatore and the parents of three grown children: sons Ashmit and Romit and a daughter named Pari. Om is co-owner of a textile store and takes his role seriously as head of his household even though all three children have moved out. As…
Lebanese novelist and poet Rashid El-Daif is one of the leading voices in contemporary Arabic literature, perhaps best known in English for Dear Mr Kawabata (1995) which addresses the aftermath of the Lebanese Civil War. His most recently translated work, Paving the Sea (originally written in 2011), satirizes the aspiration for Western liberalism and nationalism,…
At the center of Kersi Khambatta’s Bombay Tabloid is Cyrus Kerman, the son of an Iran-born bakery owner, and his lifelong entanglement with Devika Wright, a beautiful Anglo-Indian dancer and model who later becomes a lawyer. Cyrus falls in love with her twice. Their story unfolds between two traumatic periods in the city’s history. The…
In This is Where the Serpent Lives, Daniyal Mueenuddin unpacks the nuances of the Pakistani landowning class through rich, in-depth characterisation filled with complex interpersonal dynamics that shed light on the realities of class, discrimination and social mobility. Divided into four sections, each with a different narrator, the novel explores the interconnected lives of characters…
Mitya New’s earlier career as a foreign correspondent in Hong Kong, China, and Europe and his present position at universities in Hong Kong and India were evidently good preparation for his debut novel, Beyond Mount Kailash, an engaging story of a cross-cultural marriage that takes a different path from the typical Asian expat story. Maria…