Book Reviews Indrajit Bose The author at the Zakir Hussain Delhi College during the Bengali Literary Festival 2018 / Photo courtesy of bitanchakraborty.com Simplicity and quiet elegance never fail to impress us. The effect of a good short story often is like a fugue or an adagio in a musical composition, creating impressions fugitifs, in the best manner of the impressionists, sketching in a mood or elaborating on a motif or theme. Bitan Chakraborty’s The Mark (Shambhabi Imprint, 2020) is unquestionably a collection of short stories revolving around the everyday lives of ordinary characters that leaves an impression of serious engagement with the contemporary Indian milieu and is also aesthetically pleasing. Chakraborty is already an established author of the novel; his foray into the short story adds a further dimension to his existing repertoire. A writer must “convincingly create an illusory world if he is to captivate his readers,” Chakraborty has said, and he appears to have lived up to his aesthetic or writerly principles in The Mark. Peripheral and marginal lives lived by characters grappling with the challenging socioeconomic realities of our times, mediated with narratorial control and poise—these are what make the stories in The Mark a testament to the craft of a storyteller and short fiction writer par excellence. The stories in the collection revolve around everyday life and broad human themes—the despair and... Continue reading at 'World Literature Today'
[ World Literature Today | 2020-04-21 13:18:37 UTC ]
My first book had been something of an accident—two or three short stories that ran together unexpectedly, hit the 25,000-word mark, and found a publisher almost immediately. It happened so fast, I hadn’t really had time to think about what I was doing. Like a lot of indie presses in 2015, my... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2025-01-08 09:56:36 UTC ]
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At the Authors Guild Foundation’s third-annual WIT: Words, Ideas, and Thinkers Literary Festival in the Berkshires this September, acclaimed author Jamaica Kincaid spoke with journalist and editor Sandra Guzmán about her latest work, An Encyclopedia of Gardening for Colored Children, illustrated... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2025-01-03 09:56:55 UTC ]
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Here are five 2025 mystery releases to have on your radar, from middle grade dark academia to short stories with sleuthing Jesuit priests. Continue reading at Book Riot
[ Book Riot | 2024-12-09 13:30:00 UTC ]
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Language of White Bones: The Secrets of Han Kang’s Poetic Prose, by Eun-Gwi Chung Essay [email protected] Thu, 12/05/2024 - 15:23 Photo of Han Kang by Paik Dahuim / Courtesy of Natur & KulturLike a clutch of words strewn over white... Continue reading at World Literature Today
[ World Literature Today | 2024-12-05 21:23:24 UTC ]
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Late in 1933, Dylan Thomas started writing a new short story. “The theme of the story I dreamed in a nightmare,” he wrote to a friend. “If successful, if the words fit to the thoughts, it will be one of the most ghastly short stories ever written.” Thomas was possessed, in part, by rejection.... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2024-10-31 08:56:14 UTC ]
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Stewart Collins says support for the Petworth literary festival in West Sussex is growing, and Kathryn Streatfield suggests local events are the solution for a changing festival worldLaura Barton’s piece paints an understandably downbeat picture of where we are now in the world of the literary... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2024-10-29 16:25:30 UTC ]
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Roger Allen: Translating Arabic and the Art of Translation, by Jonas Elbousty Interviews [email protected] Mon, 10/14/2024 - 14:56 Roger Allen was the first person to obtain a doctorate in modern Arabic literature at the University of Oxford. After... Continue reading at World Literature Today
[ World Literature Today | 2024-10-14 19:56:44 UTC ]
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Han Kang’s poetry and short stories are just as innovative and important as her novels. Continue reading at The Conversation
[ The Conversation | 2024-10-10 17:11:35 UTC ]
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Every time I read Jamie Quatro’s fiction—from her debut collection I Want to Show You More, to her 2018 novel Fire Sermon, to her short stories in the New Yorker—I experience the same edge-of-my-seat pleasure. Quatro’s characters are as alive as flesh-and-blood people; the Southern landscape... Continue reading at The Millions
[ The Millions | 2024-10-03 12:00:00 UTC ]
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In 1993, I published my first decent story in a literary journal and a few months later received a letter from an agent whose name I recognized. I’d written short stories in college classes, sent them off, and typically the only thing that came back was a rejection, housed in the... Continue reading at Electric Literature
[ Electric Literature | 2024-10-01 11:10:00 UTC ]
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Rarely have I been so moved, awed, amused, satisfied, and softly startled by a debut, but The Only Sound Is the Wind, the gorgeous new fiction collection by Pascha Sotolongo, is a deft, accomplished, utterly fearless book of short stories that seamlessly meld the mundane and the transcendent,... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2024-10-01 08:55:46 UTC ]
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The Short Stories of Moroccan Writer Mohamed Choukri: A Talk by Dr. Jonas Elbousty, by The Editors of WLT News and Events [email protected] Thu, 09/26/2024 - 13:32 The University of Oklahoma’s Center for Middle East Studies; Department of Modern... Continue reading at World Literature Today
[ World Literature Today | 2024-09-26 18:32:59 UTC ]
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Pedro Almodóvar's first book consists of a mix of short stories and personal essays that amount to 'a fragmentary autobiography.' Continue reading at Los Angeles Times
[ Los Angeles Times | 2024-09-16 10:00:58 UTC ]
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Picture a teenager in a suburban Southern California Costco, lingering by the books tables while her parents shopped. There, between the boxed vacuums and party-size clamshells of croissants, I first encountered the writing of Ha Jin. His short story, “After Cowboy Chicken Came to Town,” had... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2024-09-10 08:55:26 UTC ]
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Striding the Borderlands: Charles Ferdinand Ramuz’s Great Fear on the Mountain, by Alice-Catherine Carls Book Reviews [email protected] Thu, 09/05/2024 - 14:03 Caroline Cingria, C. F. Ramuz, pastel (1903) / Images courtesy of Noël CordonierLumen... Continue reading at World Literature Today
[ World Literature Today | 2024-09-05 19:03:58 UTC ]
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Comma Press has been publishing Palestinian short stories since 2008. Comma’s connection to Palestinian literature deepened however in 2014 when, shortly after bringing out the anthology, The Book of Gaza, all the writers we’d worked with on that book were subjected to 51 days of carpet bombing... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2024-08-27 14:32:12 UTC ]
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It’s been a rough year for the literary festival. Sparked by a campaign from Fossil Free Books (FFB), nine festivals that previously relied on support from the Baillie Gifford Foundation dropped or lost that company’s sponsorship after the firm failed to divest from fossil fuel companies and... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2024-08-19 16:14:49 UTC ]
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A public-facing event, the September Macondo Literary Festival will feature authors and culture from across Africa. The post Kenya: Nairobi’s Macondo Festival Plans for Its Fourth Iteration appeared first on Publishing Perspectives. Continue reading at Publishing Perspectives
[ Publishing Perspectives | 2024-08-02 19:13:35 UTC ]
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Her novels and short stories often explored the lives of willful women who loved men who were crass, unfaithful or already married. Continue reading at The New York Times
[ The New York Times | 2024-07-29 02:48:48 UTC ]
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The author of humorous short stories finds emotional connections in tales that engage with tech. But he’s more interested in the ties between humans. Continue reading at The New York Times
[ The New York Times | 2024-07-24 09:04:44 UTC ]
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