The Story of a Widow is a lovely book by Musharraf Ali Farooqi about a middle-aged woman in Karachi adjusting to widowhood. The story begins as Mona Ahmad reflects on her marriage and wonders what, if anything, she should do...
A full-length novel is very satisfying, but even short stories from such an accomplished author are too tempting to pass up. Amor Towles’ A Gentleman in Moscow and The Lincoln Highway were both lovely pieces of historical fiction. They have...
Isra is the child of a Palestinian (Falasteen) father and an American (white) mother. When her mother dies young (when Isra is only 8), and her father seemingly deserts them, she is brought into Amu and Amtu’s household (literally, uncle...
n an interview at the end of The Other Woman, a collection of short stories primarily about extramarital affairs, editor Monica Das says she was interested in studying the literary representation of polygamy and bigamy and their adverse socioeconomic impact...
The Hazelbourne Ladies Motorcycle and Flying Club is Helen Simonson’s third novel. Her debut novel, Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand, was quite delightful. Her second, The Summer Before the War, had a charming cover but the novel itself did not live...
Having read Verghese’s other novels (Cutting for Stone, The Tennis Partner, and My Own Country), I was fairly confident I would enjoy his latest, The Covenant of Water. However, I was not expecting to enjoy it as much as I...
It is immediately obvious why the novel is so titled, because Apple Island (42 acres, barely 300 feet from the mainland of the USA), despite seeming so bare and deprived, is a sort of paradise. The novel is set in...
Thelonious Ellison is an academic and a writer of fiction. He is also black, and unfortunately, his books do not conform to the publishing industry’s idea of black writing. A typical response from a reviewer: The novel is finely crafted,...
At a quarter to eleven on August 12, 2022, on a sunny Friday morning in upstate New York, I was attacked and almost killed by a young man with a knife just after I came out on stage at the...
Over the last few years, many damning reports and videos of police brutality and bias against African-Americans have emerged and been disseminated via the internet, sparking the Black Lives Matter movement. Some parts of the Indian-American community stayed out of...
This novel kicks off with the protagonist, Pearson, being told to take her child home from school because he used unacceptable language, namely, he said his classmate’s T-shirt was stupid – the forbidden S-word. In a dinner party that night,...
When I picked up this collection of short stories, Next Door by Jahnavi Barua, I was intrigued by the idea — to be invited into the homes and lives of strangers. What I didn’t expect was such darkness. Set mainly...
I had been eagerly awaiting Mannion’s second novel since her amazing debut, A Crooked Tree; nor have I been disappointed. This read equally well, the kind of novel that draws a reader in quickly and holds the reader’s attention effortlessly...
It’s not that the storyline lacks plausibility. Some of us are all too familiar with the NRI engineer, MD or MBA grad who goes to India for 3 weeks and comes back married to a virtual stranger, the so-called ‘marriage...
Books and movies about sports are abundant, and tend to follow a certain pattern: hero (or more rarely heroine) is unusually talented, faces hurdles, is set back at some point, but eventually triumphs over adversity, winning trophies and learning (and...
IRA sisters
Passion
More beskuit, but less satisfying
Cultural appropriation?
Shaped and marked by the war in Sri Lanka
A Turbulent World
A chronicle of familial mental illness
Daawat-e-Ishq: For the Love of Food & Films
Contraception through the ages
Neither white enough nor Arabic enough, though she can pass for either
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