Wani Nazir — Excerpt: Spotless isn’t about pain. It’s a coming-of-age story, a journal, and a cosmic poem all at once. The narrator’s voice is sharp, self-aware, and funny when you least expect it. You can taste it and feel the muck.
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Translating Melancholy — Sabika Abbas Naqvi’s Rendition of Rahman Abbas’s Rohzin, or The Melancholy of the Soul
Wani Nazir — Excerpt: Naqvi’s translation doesn’t merely change Abbas’s prose into English; it also brings back the depth of Rohzin’s pain, its remarkable beauty, and its intellectual complexity.
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The Audition
Devin James Leonard — Excerpt: “I’ll work on my French accent.” The casting director wagged his head and rolled his eyes at that.
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Chronicling a Vanishing World Between Living and Loving — Bhagirath Mishra’s Charanbhumi: Echoes from the Grazing Lands
Ritam Dutta — Excerpt: The novel’s prose, as rendered in English by Manikuntala Dasgupta, carries the scent of its soil. Her translation has a rare transparency—it does not attempt to embellish but allows the natural music of the original to flow through.
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Reading Shafak in a Burning World: The Art of Storytelling
Panchami — Excerpt: What began as reading ‘about’ the region transcended into reading ‘from’ the region. Shafak’s work was a beacon, my entry into literature from West Asia.