Category Archives: South Asian
Anil’s Ghost by Michael Ondaatje
Before I let myself even open Michael Ondaatje’s newest title, The Cat’s Table, which hit shelves earlier this month, I was determined to read his previous novels that I had somehow missed. The realization that I have now earned access to Table is rather bittersweet as I know even more clearly that the wait for Ondaatje’s next book will be considerable (sniff, sniff).
Even more than his 1992 Booker Prize-winning The English Patient (which I feel I must now re-read), Anil’s Ghost proves to be a more lasting novel for me, as much for what appears on the printed page as what does not.
Anil Tissera, a forensic anthropologist, arrives in her native Sri Lanka after 15 years of living in the West, not so much because of family or cultural ties, but because she is sent by a Swiss human rights group to investigate the escalating numbers of alleged murders. The Sri Lankan government and various rebel factions have been carrying on a brutal, stealthy war for decades and the body count continues to multiply. Paired with a local archeologist, Sarath Diyasena, Anil is never quite sure whom she can trust. The two form an uneasy bond over a certain skeleton – dubbed Sailor (along with its companions, Tinker, Tailor, and Soldier) –whose murder Anil is determined to prove.
Fluidly passing back and forth from the present to disparate moments in the past, Ondaatje creates an elliptical landscape of a woman’s life in constant flux. Anil regularly discards parts of her life, from her given name (at 12, she buys her brother’s name from him for 100 rupees, a pen set, 50 cigarettes, “and a sexual favour”) to her married lover whom she leaves with a knife buried in his flesh with the admonition, “‘Remember this is what I did to you in Borrego Springs.’”
Her time in Sri Lanka will (predictably) be temporary; what she learns of her native country and especially its people – Sarath’s disgraced teacher-mentor, Sarath’s doctor brother Gamini, the sculptor Ananda and his disappeared wife – will eventually force her to flee. Her tenuous relationship with Sarath must come to an abrupt end, and she will again leave behind another unresolved life.
For every fact that Ondaatje (who is also Sri Lankan-born, and long Canadian-domiciled) presents, he invites new questions for which he does not offer clear answers. The ghosts throughout are many, not limited to Anil and her past selves, but even more the countless missing persons both named and unnamed. Part mystery, part thriller, perhaps even part memoir, Anil’s Ghost haunts long after the final page.
Readers: Adult
Published: 2000 Continue reading
Filed under ..Adult Readers, .Audio, .Fiction, Canadian Asian Pacific American, South Asian, Sri Lankan
Author Interview: Tahmima Anam
In spite of the fierce, wrenching content of her books, Tahmima Anam in real life is a gentle, warm, incredibly youthful presence. We met in livetime a few years ago in Washington, DC, as her debut novel, A Golden Age, was winning major international awards, including the 2008 Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best First Book. Recognizing the literary stardom to come, Anam was the earliest invitee to the Smithsonian Institution’s 2008 South Asian Literary and Theater Arts Festival [SALTAF], an annual public program of the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Program (my then-day job that came with serendipitous literary perks for sure). By the time Anam landed in DC from London almost 11 months after that initial invite, she had earned some well-deserved, hefty accolades.
Tahmima Anam’s impressive debut, A Golden Age, is the first of a trilogy set in Bangladesh, before, during, and after the War of Independence that ended in 1971 with the birth of Bangladesh as a new nation separate from Pakistan. Anam’s first protagonist is Rehana Haque, who while still mourning the sudden loss of her too-young husband, loses custody of her young son and daughter to a scheming brother-in-law. Separated for a year with her children faraway in Lahore while she remains in Dhaka, Rehana – in spite of what seems to be the impossible trap of young widowhood without a clear means of support – manages to reunite with her children out of sheer will, determined she will never lose them again. In 1971 when the people of Bangladesh declare independence from Pakistan, Rehana is no longer certain how she can protect her children during a horrific time marked by betrayal and terror. But neither will she remain a silent bystander while civil war threatens to destroy her family, friends, and adopted country.
From Rehana, Anam shifts her focus to the Haque children in The Good Muslim, the second book of her Bengal Trilogy which debuts this month. For the first time since the war, Rehana, her son Sohail, and daughter Maya are under the same roof … and yet their physical reunion is overshadowed by emotional disconnection. Sohail’s wife has just passed away when Maya returns home, leaving behind shocking violence in the small village where she was a doctor for several years. She is tired and spent, having witnessed the too-often subjugation of women just for being women. She can’t comprehend Sohail’s new religious fervor since his return from the war, his reinvention as a revered Muslim leader, nor his unbending rules and expectations in the name of a god that Maya can’t accept as absolute. Sohail’s devotion to his faith leaves him blind to his utterly neglected son – a frail young boy, unwashed, clothed in tatters, thieving, lying, and yet the only request he voices regularly is to be able to go to school. Bypassing her brother’s objections, Maya tries to at least provide her nephew with a basic literacy, but her attempts at enlightenment have tragic consequences.
Born in Dhaka, Bangladesh in 1975, currently domiciled in London, Anam’s writerly strength is driven by a sharply observant imagination that allows her to recreate a time before she was born, before she had access to her memory. Surely her international upbringing in Paris, New York City, and Bangkok – thanks to her father’s peripatetic UN career – instilled in her a broad understanding of humanity in diverse situations. Her privileged education – undergrad at Mount Holyoke, PhD in social anthropology at Harvard (yes, that’s Dr. Anam!) – made sure that xenophobia was never even a glimmering possibility in her questioning mind.
Catching up this time via phone lines strung under the Pond from DC to London, Anam was as soft-spoken as ever. That she spoke about war, corruption, imprisonment, and even rape, rarely changed her firm but even tone. She was also sure to balance the tragedy with joyful moments of family, love, and even someday-children. As expected, her ability to explicate and engage made an hour-plus pass all too quickly …
This year, Bangladesh is celebrating its 40th birthday. You were born four years later, and have now lived through much of your country’s tumultuous history, the vast changes, improvements, and challenges. What are some of your immediate thoughts about your birth country during this celebratory time?
I feel it’s a mixed bag. The good news is the incredible progress that has been made in major areas: we’ve been a functioning democracy for the last 20 years after a tumultuous period of martial law and army rule. The world of micro-credit founded by Muhammad Yunus and his Grameen Bank has changed so many people’s lives, especially among the very poor. The fact that 95% of the borrowers are women means many improvements for women especially. Through microcredit and state investment in girls’ education, women are becoming economically powerful. They’re sending their daughters to school, they’re managing their homes, and taking jobs. Bangladesh has a strong feminist movement; women are advocating for legal changes to the constitution for more equitable rights.
In addition to the progress, I’m aware of a lot of problems, especially the threat of climate change. In spite of being a democracy, our government has a top-down political power structure. The people suffer because of corruption.
We need more democracy, less corruption. [... click here for more]
Author interview: Feature: “An Interview with Tahmima Anam,” Bookslut.com, August 2011
Readers: Adult Continue reading
The Good Muslim by Tahmima Anam
Tahmima Anam continues her outstanding Bengal Trilogy, which began with A Golden Age, her glowing 2008 debut that propelled Anam into a privileged literary circle filled with international accolades. From Rehana Haque, the protagonist mother in Age, Anam shifts her focus to the grown Haque children in her second book which hits U.S. shelves in just a couple of weeks.
For the first time since the Bangladesh war of independence finally ended, Rehana, her son Sohail, and daughter Maya are all under the same roof … and yet their physical reunion is overshadowed by emotional disconnection. Sohail’s wife has just passed away when Maya returns home, leaving behind shocking violence in the small village where she was a doctor for several years. Maya is tired and spent, having witnessed the too-often subjugation of women just for being women.
Maya can’t comprehend Sohail’s new religious fervor since his return from the war, his reinvention as a revered Muslim leader, nor his unbending rules and expectations in the name of a god that Maya can’t accept as absolute. Sohail’s devotion to his faith leaves him blind to his utterly neglected son – a thin young boy, unwashed, clothed in tatters, thieving, lying, and yet the only request he voices regularly is to be able to go to school. Bypassing her brother’s objections, Maya tries to at least provide her nephew with basic literacy, but her attempts at enlightenment have tragic consequences.
As Bangladesh celebrates 40 years of independent country-hood, Anam’s intimate, vivid new title appears just in time as both testimony of endured brutality, and a reminder of the difficult choices survivors faced once the violence finally subsided. That survival always comes with a price: Sohail’s search for redemption takes him in one extreme direction, while Maya chooses a very different path. And Rehana – her silences more telling perhaps than her words can be – watches as her children’s lives diverge further and further from one another, and eventually from hers as well.
Readers: Adult
Published: 2011 Continue reading
Netherland by Joseph O’Neill
To reduce this rich, complicated, multi-layered story into a few sentences seems almost disrespectful … but try I must to offer a skeletal overview so I can share some of the best stuff …
Hans van den Broek, high-power equities analyst, is an eternal immigrant. Dutch-born and raised, London-employed and domiciled with British wife Rachel and their son Jack, Hans considers the family’s move to Manhattan as “good fortune” … until their brief American adventures unravel with 9/11, and Rachel and Jack too soon return over the Pond.
Alone in New York, Hans spends most of his free time with Chuck Ramkissoon, a charming, scheming Trinidadian transplant with grandiose dreams of creating a cricket empire. Part entrepreneur, part gangster, all poseur, Chuck takes Hans for the ride of this life … until Chuck disappears and re-emerges as a murdered corpse found disintegrating in New York’s Gowanus Canal on page 6. In the almost-300-pages that follow, Hans reconstructs and re-examines their unusual, entertaining, unclear relationship.
So now you get the gist, check out this 2009 PEN/Faulker-winning novel’s title, so cleverly fraught that whole reams could be written about just the single word. The most obvious reference is to Hans’ Dutch roots, that missing ‘s’ an homage to Hans’ own separation from his birth-country. [Author Joseph O'Neill, who is hapa Irish and Turkish, also spent time in the Netherlands, attending boarding school in the Hague.]
Consider Netherland also means ‘lower-land’ and ‘other-land’: Hans and family initially choose fashionable Tribeca in lower Manhattan to call home, until the hellish destruction of 9/11 moves them to the historic Chelsea Hotel; when Hans’ wife and son return to London, Hans is left in a netherland of loneliness and isolation, until he becomes a regular visitor in Chuck’s unique labyrinthine landscape, itself an outlying netherland of cricket fields, seedy buildings, international accents, and questionable business dealings.
As undeniably entertaining as Netherland proves to be, it’s also a sobering look at our 21st-century disconnect: For a brief time, Hans and Chuck convince us of their growing relationship, two souls thinking they recognize a kindred other. And yet, by story’s end, O’Neill will masterfully shatter such illusion, setting the characters adrift again, left searching with just a glimmer of hope of maybe finding and somehow connecting …
Readers: Adult
Published: 2008 Continue reading
Filed under ..Adult Readers, .Audio, .Fiction, British, European, South Asian, Turkish
The Grand Plan to Fix Everything by Uma Krishnaswami, illustrated by Abigail Halpin
My first reaction a few chapters into Uma Krishnaswami‘s latest middle-grade romp of a novel was, ‘Take me, take me! I wanna move to Swapnagiri, too!’ Dini and her family’s South Indian adventures hadn’t even started yet, and I was ready to pack my bags … all sorts of wondrous memories of wandering through Keralan tea plantations (chasing fresh elephant tracks at sunrise!) made me announce to the hubby I’m heading for the hills! At least in my reading world … oh, if only!
Eleven-year-old Dini has a rather sparkly happy life, living in Takoma Park (a Maryland suburb just outside Washington, DC) with two doting parents. Turn the pages, and you’ll see how illustrator Abigail Halpin perfectly infuses her with mischievous charm (just look at that beckoning cover for proof!).
Dini undoubtedly has the perfect best friend, Maddie, who shares her love of all things Bollywood, especially the magic of filmi megastar Dolly Singh. The girls are shocked, then devastated when Dini’s doctor-mother announces she finally got the grant she’s always wanted – her tenacious sixth time applying! – to work in a medical clinic for women and children in tiny Swapnagiri (which means “Dream Mountain”) on the other side of the world …!
Forget Bollywood dance camp for the BFFs … Dini and her family are off in two weeks, for two whole years. Everything happens quick-quick and Dini finds herself installed at Sunny Villa, adjusting to a brand new life filled with fun-loving monkeys, curry puffs (with chocolate), and quirky new neighbors and possible friends. Best surprise of all: Dolly Singh is hiding out somewhere in Swapnagiri and Dini and Maddie (thanks to the magical connection of the internet) are going to figure out how to find her.
Krishnaswami’s extensive cast includes dedicated mail-people (going postal here has a tenaciously helpful new meaning!), a grumpy young girl who sounds more like a bird (any number of birds!), a talented pastry chef eyeing a Guinness World Record, a filmi studio executive missing his precious star, a broken-hearted would-be lover, and a rattling electric car that mysteriously plays Bollywood tunes which even the most talented mechanic can’t seem to control. Thanks to Dini’s excellent direction, Krishnaswami’s newest production is most definitely a well-scripted, energetic, serendipitous delight.
Readers: Middle Grade
Published: 2011 Continue reading
Filed under ..Middle Grade Readers, .Fiction, Indian, Indian African, South Asian, South Asian American
A Foreigner Carrying in the Crook of His Arm a Tiny Bomb by Amitava Kumar
If Rip Van Winkle were to read A Foreigner Carrying in the Crook of His Arm a Tiny Bomb upon waking, he would most likely shake his head and dismiss it as farce.
Alas, you’ll only find this title in the “non-fiction” section of bookstores and libraries; it’s published by an esteemed academic press and written by a respected professor of English at an elite American college. Indeed, “truth is stranger than fiction,” and “you just can’t make this stuff up.” (Although, coincidentally, journalist/novelist/poet/professor Amitava Kumar also had a novel – Nobody Does the Right Thing – published on the same day as Foreigner.)
Novel aside, Foreigner is part contemporary history, part investigative journalism, part political treatise, part memoir – and an absolute must-read. My greatest fear is that the readers who most need to read this book will not.
Kumar is an excellent storyteller. He’s also immensely convincing. Drawing on his vast, voracious knowledge of literature, film, television, and breaking headlines, Kumar makes a case that post-9/11 fear has created a not-so-brave new world of bullies and fools.
Moving fluidly between his adopted U.S. home and his birthplace of India – another country altered by concerns over terrorism – Kumar carefully exposes what he sees as the senseless abuse of power justified by the “war on terror”: “[M]uch of my reportage here is in the service of presenting the anti-terrorism state as the biggest bungler,” Kumar writes in his acknowledgements as he thanks “the non-experts,” “the losers,” and “the small people.”
Kumar first focuses on two ineffectual men, each of whom he classifies as an “accidental terrorist.” He demonstrates in rich detail the ways in which both men were victims of legal entrapment, more guilty of stupidity than actual terrorism, manipulated into crime by others who were mostly concerned with saving themselves in the eyes of an already nervous US government.
The first “accidental terrorist” is Hemant Lakhani, a nearly-70-year-old failed businessman with delusions of grandeur, who was convicted of trying to sell a missile to a would-be terrorist. The missile was a dud, shipped to a New Jersey hotel room by the FBI, and brokered by a “terrorist” who proved to be FBI informant Habib Rehman. Rehman – also a failed businessman – had considerable debts, a self-confessed track record as a liar, and a history of tax evasion. His handsome salary was funded by US taxpayers.
The second terrorist manqué is Shawahar Matin Siraj, a 24-year-old Pakistani American, convicted of conspiring to bomb a NYC subway station. Kumar wryly questions the validity of “prosecut[ing] an individual as a bomber when there is no bomb on the scene.” The lead witness against the unsophisticated Siraj – who is caught on tape insisting on “No killing” and wants to “ask [his] mother’s permission” – was Osama Eldawoody, an Egyptian-born nuclear engineer. Eldawoody was paid $100,000 by the New York Police Department to spy on fellow mosque-goers in Brooklyn and Staten Island. He became an informant via the FBI who literally arrived at his front door because a neighbor reported “suspicious-looking packages on the doorway” (clothing purchased online). The unemployed Eldawoody just “wanted to help.” [... click here for more]
Review: Christian Science Monitor, August 17, 2010
Readers: Adult
Published: 2010 Continue reading
In the Name of Honor by Mukhtar Mai with Marie-Thérèse Cuny, translated by Linda Coverdale, foreword by Nicholas D. Kristof
Mukhtar Mai’s story is heartbreaking, gut-wrenching, even nauseating … but ultimately, her story of inexplicable violence is not about being a victim but a testament to inspiring empowerment of girls and women all over the world through the power of education.
Eight years ago, I got an email from a longtime friend that the New York Times‘ Nicholas D. Kristof (who provides the foreword here) was raising funds to help a gang-rape victim keep her school going in rural Pakistan. After reading the shattering story, I had no choice but to immediately send a check. As Kristof and co-writer/wife Sheryl WuDunn write in their bestselling, life-changing title, Half the Sky, even $27 can change lives for the better forever.
By order of the village council, Mukhtar Mai was brutally raped by four men, as justified punishment for a crime her younger brother did not commit. As a skinny 12-years-old, Mai’s brother was jailed and repeatedly beaten and sodomized for allegedly raping a woman in her 20s who was part of the village’s powerful, lawless, ruling caste. Brutalizing the alleged perpetrator was not enough; Mai’s body became further battleground for degradation.
Expected to commit suicide to save her family from further disgrace, Mai was prepared to die. But something propelled her to get up, report the crime to the police, and demand justice. The police tried desperately to silence her, taking advantage of her illiteracy to create false reports on blank papers which bore her thumbprint.
In spite of such illegal efforts, Mai’s story began to make national headlines, and then the world literally arrived at her door, ready to hear her voice. The Pakistani government was forced to respond, and awarded her a sum equal to $8,500. Having spent most of her life unable to read and write, Mai had been victimized not only by her attackers, but also the police and government because of that illiteracy. Mai was determined that what had happened to her would not happen to other girls and women: with that blood money, Mai started a school, to give the girls strong voices and to teach the boys that a woman’s body is not a war zone.
While the international articles made the world aware about Mai’s story, her memoir adds further depth to her ongoing journey towards justice. Change has come slowly, but the struggle continues. She talks about how silence, obedience, and the denial of knowledge are passed on from mother to daughter in an endless cycle of ‘honor’: “Submission is compulsory,” she explains, then insists, “… knowledge must be given to girls, and as soon as possible, before their mothers bring them up the same way they were raised themselves.” She talks about the three different legal systems women must adhere to, religious, governmental, and tribal which can too often trump all official laws. She talks about the importance of deep relationships with other women, and how her own friendship with a distant cousin gave her courage and literally saved her life.
Read and weep. And then be inspired, energized, empowered to make the world just … in small, major, any, many ways.
To read further updates about Mukhtar Mai since the release of this memoir, check the New York Times news page.
Readers: Adult
Published: 2006 (United States) Continue reading
Filed under ..Adult Readers, .Memoir, .Nonfiction, Pakistani, South Asian
Half Life by Roopa Farooki
I don’t know why the galley’s back cover touts “shades of Slumdog Millionaire and The Namesake” because this book has no overlaps with either of those titles, much less their authors, or even locations! Really, not all brown people look alike – authors or their characters! Slumdog (based on the even-better than-film book Q&A) is a Mumbai story by an Indian diplomat now based in South Africa. Namesake (with the film version better than the original book) is about an immigrant Indian family and their American-born son by a Brooklyn-based Indian American.
And don’t even get me started on the cover – it represents no one in the book, much less any situation within the book’s pages!
All that superfluous stuff aside, once you get about 30 pages or so into Half Life to familiarize yourself with the three alternating voices, you’ll probably not be able to put it down. Roopa Farooki, a Pakistani-born, London-reared, Oxford-educated, southeast UK/southwest France-domiciled author of three previous novels, follows a pair of lost lovers and a father from London to Singapore to Kuala Lumpur, with memory stops throughout the South Asian subcontinent.
“It’s time to stop fighting, and go home,” Aruna reads in a poetry collection one morning partway through breakfast in her London flat. And that’s exactly what she does. With only her purse and passport in hand – at least she changed out of her sleepwear – she leaves her house keys, her too-adoring doctor husband of a year who has already left for work, and their London flat that was never a home. She heads to Heathrow in a daze and boards a plane to Singapore. On the other side awaits her past – Jazz, her childhood best friend and lover since adolescence, the first person she left without a word. Meanwhile, in a Kuala Lumpur hospital, Jazz’s elderly father Hassan desperately awaits his son’s forgiveness for untold secrets so he can finally be free of his painful life.
Together, Aruna and Jazz must figure out who they are, especially who they are to each other. While she’s managed to wean herself from the harder drugs, Aruna’s addictive habits keep her not quite balancing on the right side of alcoholic smoker and sex addict; self-medication is clearly not working. Jazz has shut down his own heart, squandering his literary talents and churning out one exotic-setting, happy-ending romance after another. His father, a lauded poet, is fighting his failing body, hoping to stay alive just long enough to tell his son the truth of his relationship with his son’s late mother. With so many swirling secrets, you’ll probably guess one or two along the way … but don’t get too comfortable, because Farooki is very adept at turning your expectations upside down yet again …
Half Life debuts in May, so hopefully the galley’s back page at the very least proves to be just a temporary marker and the publishing-powers will realize Farooki’s original work can very-well-thank-you-very-much stand all on its own.
Readers: Adult
Published: 2010 Continue reading
Filed under ..Adult Readers, .Fiction, British Asian, Pakistani, South Asian
Arzee the Dwarf by Chandrahas Choudhury
The eponymous Arzee is a diminutive young man in his late 20s living with his mother and younger brother in crowded Bombay, swaggeringly looking forward to the near future. In spite of the difficulties he’s faced (much of which he blames on his size), he’s convinced his life is on the verge of fortuitous changes – any day, he’ll be promoted to head projectionist at the Noor, a once-glorious movie house that has seen better times. His lofty new title means his mother will be able to find him a wife, he’ll be able to start his own family, and live the ‘normal’ life he so craves.
But the best-laid plans (and expectations) often go awry, and Arzee’s hopes are quickly dashed when he learns that the Noor is about to be permanently shut down. Anxious and bewildered, Arzee finds that his only relief from his internal desperate demons is in conversations with some of the least unexpected companions, including a loan shark, the current head projectionist he’s worked with for over a decade and yet barely knows, and an entire bar full of sympathetic girls. Talking brings revelations, both hopeful and somber. He finds the unexpected community he’s been longing for, and eventually even gains the courage to seek out the lost love of his life.
Choudhury’s slim novel is a simple fairy tale at heart, cleverly embellished with a cast of unexpected characters, searching conversations, and shrewd observations about humanity (and sometimes the lack thereof). A dwarf-in-debt in a dead-end job and his long-lost lady-love separated by misunderstandings … dare we hope for a happy ending?
Tidbit: Here’s another small world moment: last spring when I told a local friend – with whom I share books, tea, and her fabulous art – that I had just started a book blog, she immediately linked me to another friend of hers she knew in Bombay who also book-blogs, and mentioned that his first novel was soon to debut.
Lucky for me, one of our wonderful interns went off to India and brought me back a copy of that said novel … and that’s how Arzee the Dwarf by young Chandrahas Choudhury, who book-blogs at The Middle Stage (we do seem to be in serendipitous agreement on so many titles), finally landed in my travel reading pile this holiday season. Arzee is not yet published here at home, but it’s got a major publisher (HarperCollins) abroad, so a U.S. pub date can’t be far. In the meantime, young Choudhury has an upcoming short story anthology, India: A Traveller’s Literary Companion, making its U.S. debut this spring. Stay tuned for that one …
Readers: Adult
Published: 2009 (India) Continue reading
Filed under ..Adult Readers, .Fiction, Indian, South Asian
In the Convent of Little Flowers: Stories by Indu Sundaresan
First things first: Indu Sundaresan’s only (thus far) short story collection (she’s best known for her lengthy historical novels, The Twentieth Wife and Feast of Roses) is definitely an effective read. Many of the stories make you think beyond your immediate world as they temporarily transport you elsewhere (especially when you’re stuck in a middle seat on a too-packed holiday flight). You’ll learn something for sure, and you’ll be thinking about at least a few of the characters after you finish the final page. All good things that make for good literature, right?
But something about the stories, well written as they are, just didn’t sit right with me. Maybe the number of victims – each caught between the bonds of immutable traditions and the lure of so-called modernity – were just too overwhelming … an older couple who find suicide their only escape from their vicious only son, a 12-year-old girl who allegedly agrees to a gruesome death as a human addition to her way-too-older husband’s funeral pyre, another young girl who falls for a boy of the wrong religion and is stoned then immolated by her own grandmother to save the family’s honor, a hard-working man who pathetically bemoans his life because his youngest daughter has shamefully had an illegitimate child, a once well-off older couple blessed with a dozen children who eventually rob and abandon them in old age, a long-suffering ‘good’ wife unwittingly deceived by her incompetent husband and his greedy family …
In the “Afterword,” Sundaresan comments, “So if there’s one thing the stories have in common, it is that they all deal with that intense moment in which people confront disturbing events.” She offers some background behind how she came to writer a few of these stories – a short story competition, a dinner conversation, a newspaper article, and so on. Clearly, the stories have some basis in Sundaresan’s reality, in her experiences. But in spite of the ‘truth’ amidst all that Schadenfreude, the stories also have an element of cloying exoticism that ultimately proves both disturbing and disappointing.
Readers: Adult
Published: 2008 Continue reading
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