The 2012 Dirty Dozen
For your reading pleasure, a list of our favorite books from 2012–books that we read in 2012 that is, because we reject the Cult of the New and don’t care when they were published. Sepoy’s Six: Herein...
View ArticleCall for Papers on Aesthetics and Partition
Tentative title: The sentimental and the melodramatic: exploring Partition aesthetics We seek essays for a volume (Routledge) looking at the sentimental and melodramatic aesthetics of images, art,...
View ArticleZabardast Ashk
About seventeen years ago, I started a project translating a collection of the Hindi author Upendranath Ashk’s short stories. The project has had a checkered career but is finally coming to fruition...
View ArticleFreedom’s Just Another Word for Nothing Left to Lose
Ayesha Jalal, The Pity of Partition: Manto’s Life, Times, and Work across the India-Pakistan Divide. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2013). — Since my review of Ayesha Jalal’s new biography...
View ArticleTaking Liberties
Here‘s a new interview with me about my translations of Upendranath Ashk’s short stories compiled in Hats and Doctors. Here’s an excerpt, on metaphors for the relationship between the writer and the...
View ArticleThe Story of Aath Din
Prashansa Taneja is currently working on a translation of Upendranath Ashk’s memoir of his supposed enmity with Manto, “Manto: Mera Dushman”. Below is an excerpt which chronicles Manto and Ashk’s time...
View ArticleAnnouncing my new novel, Taste
Excited to announce that my new novel, Taste, will be out from Foxhead Books in early April. Here’s the amazing trailer directed by Carl Sprague and edited by Brett Marty: You can pre-order the book...
View ArticleThe 2012 Dirty Dozen
For your reading pleasure, a list of our favorite books from 2012–books that we read in 2012 that is, because we reject the Cult of the New and don’t care when they were published. Sepoy’s Six: Herein...
View ArticleCall for Papers on Aesthetics and Partition
Tentative title: The sentimental and the melodramatic: exploring Partition aesthetics We seek essays for a volume (Routledge) looking at the sentimental and melodramatic aesthetics of images, art,...
View ArticleThere’s something about Rats
My new interview with Amitava Kumar about his book A Matter of Rats, out from Duke University Press, is up on Bookslut. Here’s a sneak peak: You discuss a Hindi short story in your book, in which the...
View ArticleDeath is Iconic
This summer, Israel bombarded the Gaza Strip, killing hundreds of civilians, bombing schools and hospitals, and even UNRWA shelters. This might just have been another chapter in the ongoing occupation...
View ArticleYeh Dosti
Friend break-ups are usually painful, lonely affairs. But on September 13, 2015, a young man from Gujranwala, Pakistan, took the unusual step of publicly announcing on a social media network he was no...
View ArticleThe Conditional World of the Refugee
[A guest post by Zirwat Chowdhury] What would little Aylan have become if he had grown up? Riss’s recent cartoon in Charlie Hebdo does not hesitate to prognosticate about the future of this child....
View ArticleLessons Learned: Susanne and Lloyd Rudolph, in memoriam
Life Lessons [Professors Susanne and Lloyd Rudolph, University of Chicago professors, brilliant political economists of South Asia, outstanding mentors and wonderful friends, both passed away this...
View ArticleThere is a One-Eyed Man in the House
(Recently, I was asked to write something about translation for The Byword, a new journal of arts, literature and culture based in New Delhi. I wrote this essay, which appears in the latest edition,...
View ArticlePoetry Management
[Shubham Shree’s irreverent Hindi poem “Poetry Management” has been awarded the 2016 Bharat Bhushan Agrawal Prize by renowned Hindi author Uday Prakash to howls of rage from the Hindi poetic...
View ArticleWhat is Aleppo?
What is Aleppo? Aleppo is a city in Syria. Aleppo is a city near-destroyed by civil war. Aleppo is besieged. Aleppo is a refugee crisis. Aleppo is the site of an international proxy war. When...
View ArticleA Manifesto for the Age of Orange
We need new metaphors. Many of us will feel tempted in the coming years to speak of Our Leader’s ‘black heart’, to call him ‘The Dark Lord,’ or to opine that we have entered a new age of darkness. Yes,...
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