The book does not tell us anything a common Kashmiri doesnโt know and it doesnโt tell it in a captivating way that might grab a reader from start to finish. Set in the seething summer of 2008 when streets exploded with rage over the controversial Amarnath land deal in Kashmir, scribe Shakoor Ratherโs debut novel…
Written by the winner of the International Prize for Arabic Fiction, Saud Alsanousiโs Mama Hissa’s Mice is an apocalyptic and caustically funny novel about the power of friendship in a war-torn world. Mama Hissaโs Mice was a banned book in Kuwait, where the book is set, for over four years. Mama Hissa’s Mice,ย published originally in…
Rave reviews apart, veterinarian Shabir Ahmad Mirโs debut novel is poetry without rhyme. The Plague Upon Us is not about the rampaging coronavirus crippling the world and making billions captives in their homes, including 8 million lockdown-stricken Kashmiris. Itโs a plague that has consumed the life in Kashmir since 1947. This is a story of…
In Kashmirโs literary landscape, Shafi Ahmad comes across as an unassuming wordsmith driven by an old school authorโs belief. He lets his pen speak for himself. But the absence of the public eye doesnโt make him any minnow, especially when it comes to capturing the strife-torn stories of his homeland. With his debut novel spark-plugged…
โThere are some things that canโt be explained in this life,โ Menshiki went on, โand some others that probably shouldnโt be explained. Especially when putting them into words ignores what is most crucial.โ ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย โHaruki Murakami,…
Salik In creating a world of shared love, a veil of ignorance and distance have often created imaginative realities that have separated us by creating fears and misinformation about one another. A kid in some corner of the world grows up believing that, whites are white because they ran away before God finished making them,…
New Delhi: Mirza Waheed speaks the way he writes: with care. Ask this Kashmiri novelist a question, he looks a tad flustered. He averts his eyes, fidgets with his fingers and weighs his words before he finally answers the query. I spend time writing my sentences, I donโt want to hurry. And I am not a…
NEW DELHI: She writes poetic prose, employs redolent metaphors and evokes utmost admiration for her novelistic virtues. Arundhati Roy is anything but a boring author. The 1997 Booker Prize-winner, who is equally at ease writing scathing essays, says she is a โdisciplined writerโ whose heart lies in fiction as it is a โconnective tissueโ between…