Anjana Basu — Excerpt: Unlike Ruskin Bond, Roy’s love of the hills is not unqualified. She sees the monsoons as a season of stoicism — life in the hills, in fact, despite the wild beauty all around demands a certain acceptance from all those who live there.
Jonaki Ray — Excerpt: Girls Who Stray has an edge to it, a raw honesty in the depiction of the central character that makes it distinct.
Wani Nazir — Excerpt: Santosh Bakaya’s poetic mini-epic is an evocation of the dreamscape bathed in lost garden scents and memory whorls, and the rhythms of a haunted, healing world.
Wani Nazir — Excerpt: They are a musical, rhythmic, and symbolic world, and every metaphor has a spiritual, cultural, and cosmic meaning. Translating Rumi might either dampen the original’s exuberant essence or sever its strong ties to Persian and Sufi culture.
Wani Nazir — Excerpt: Manchanda’s comprehensive description reminds me of Narayan’s Malgudi, which is very place-based, or Anita Desai’s researched landscapes. But his view is full of life, character, and joy in the small things in life.