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 ]
When I was nine years old my mother temporarily moved from our home in Los Angeles to New York City for a job in private banking. The family lore is that I wrote her letters, including short stories about a family of hamsters. I don’t remember what I was feeling then or why I did […] Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2025-03-25 08:58:26 UTC ]
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New Harper Lee short stories coming this fall, a day in the life of an audiobook narrator, the It Books of March, and more news. Continue reading at Book Riot
[ Book Riot | 2025-03-09 15:00:00 UTC ]
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Eight unpublished stories by the To Kill a Mockingbird author will be issued later this year as The Land of Sweet ForeverNever-before-seen short stories by Harper Lee will be published later this year, it has been announced.Eight short stories written before the author started the novel that... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2025-03-04 16:09:02 UTC ]
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Before she published “To Kill a Mockingbird,” Lee had written short stories in which she explored some of its themes and characters. Continue reading at The New York Times
[ The New York Times | 2025-03-04 14:43:04 UTC ]
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Fall in love with this collection of short stories centering Indigenous love and what it is to make a relationship. Continue reading at Book Riot
[ Book Riot | 2025-02-28 13:00:00 UTC ]
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The longlist for the International Booker Prize 2025 “celebrates the best works of long-form fiction or collections of short stories ... Continue reading at Book Riot
[ Book Riot | 2025-02-25 18:01:05 UTC ]
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Every week, our weekly magazine The Commuter publishes a new work of flash fiction, poetry, and graphic narrative. For Black History Month, we’re looking to the archives for some of our favorite poetry and stories by Black writers, all available to read for free online. From Tara Campbell’s... Continue reading at Electric Literature
[ Electric Literature | 2025-02-21 12:05:00 UTC ]
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Mavis Gallant wrote short stories full of brutal humor that examined the hell of other people. Continue reading at The New York Times
[ The New York Times | 2025-01-18 10:00:14 UTC ]
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Lou Mathews, author of "L.A. Breakdown" and "Shaky Town," is back with "Hollywoodski," a novelized collection of short stories about a faded screenwriter. Continue reading at Los Angeles Times
[ Los Angeles Times | 2025-01-17 11:00:42 UTC ]
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Mexican Writer Guadalupe Nettel to Headline Puterbaugh Festival at OU, by the Editors of WLT News and Events [email protected] Mon, 01/13/2025 - 09:20 Author photo by Germán NájeraThe 2025 Puterbaugh Lit Fest will return to the University of... Continue reading at World Literature Today
[ World Literature Today | 2025-01-13 15:20:12 UTC ]
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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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