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1 week ago | 
scroll.in | Sayari Debnath
Last year, Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s slim novella White Nights became an online sensation on Bookstagram, with thousands of posts, fan art, and gushing reviews flooding every timeline. The Penguin Classics edition of the book comprises the titular long story and a short story, “Bobok”. “White Nights” was first published in 1848 as “Belye Nochi” and “Bobok” in 1873 (“Bobok” means “a little bean”). Both novellas have been translated from Russian by Ronald Meyers.
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2 weeks ago | 
scroll.in | Sayari Debnath
Translator Deepa Bhashthi and author Banu Mushtaq are the first duo from the Kannada language to make the International Booker Prize shortlist. Heart Lamp: Selected Stories is Mushtaq’s debut appearance in English, and Bhasthi’s third published translation. They have worked together for three years to make itpossible, the diligence and love evident in each story. The book has been published in the UK by And Other Stories and on the Indian subcontinent by Penguin Random House India.
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2 weeks ago | 
flipboard.com | Sayari Debnath
1 day agoPlus, the International Booker Prize shortlist. Trump pressed ahead with a trade war President Trump is facing blowback from trading partners, businesses and investors over sweeping tariffs, with a new wave set to snap into effect today. Those include another 50 percent duty on China. As a result, …
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2 weeks ago | 
scroll.in | Sayari Debnath
The short story form in Indian languages is truly special. I have, at times, been disappointed in short stories in English or European languages in translation, but that has never been the case for Indian languages. In fact, they have whetted my appetite so successfully that I have hungered for the authors’ other works with almost a manic fixation.
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2 weeks ago | 
scroll.in | Sayari Debnath
All’s well that ends well in Annie Zaidi’s new short and sweet novel, The Comeback. A departure from the more sombre themes that Zaidi usually writes about in her fiction and nonfiction, this is a novel about second chances in love, friendship, and career. John K, a small-time movie star, has unexpectedly tasted success in a low-budget Hindi movie. After slogging for fifteen years in Bombay badlands, the movie despite paying peanuts has catapulted him to critical acclaim.
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3 weeks ago | 
scroll.in | Sayari Debnath
Marilynne Robinson published her debut novel, Housekeeping, in 1980. Then, for the next twenty years, it appeared as though she would write fiction no more. She was interested in nuclear pollution in Britain, she wrote about modern thoughts and thinking, and she was particularly concerned about climate change and the destruction of welfare systems. The world around her was in such a distressful condition that there seemed to be no time to write fiction.
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3 weeks ago | 
scroll.in | Sayari Debnath
For publisher Sayoni Basu, her young readers always come first. She has published for children for more than 20 years, shaping new generations into curious, intelligent readers. She made her way from Oxford University Press and Penguin India to children’s imprint Puffin. She was also the publishing director at Scholastic India (2005–11) and Amar Chitra Katha (2011–12). However, 2012 saw Basu take a giant leap of faith.
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1 month ago | 
scroll.in | Sayari Debnath
Some might say that Bridgerton’s biggest USP is its romance, someone else might say it is the costumes, yet another person might say it is the background score. However, I would argue that what makes it so delightful is Lady Whistledown’s catty pamphlets that spare no gossip – and no one – in the ton. Elizabeth Gaskell’s 1853 episodic novel Cranforddoes something similar minus the cattiness or malicious intent.
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1 month ago | 
scroll.in | Sayari Debnath
There comes a time when you are confronted with all the moments when you were made and unmade by love and its various forces. Love is essential for the true liberation of the soul, but there’s also a fear of being buried under its crushing weight. There is always a risk of love inflating itself to such horrendous proportions that you can no longer recognise it as the same creature you had once nurtured. The beast swallows everything in its path.
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1 month ago | 
scroll.in | Sayari Debnath
“I am a woman going mad. I am a woman hallucinating. I imagine I am huge, raw, a giant.”Jeanette Winterson seems to care very little about rules and conventions in the matters of writing fiction. If there’s one thing she takes seriously, it’s being utterly mad. Mad in the true sense of the word, yes, and also being unpredictable, zany, and moody with what she’s creating. In her own confession, time is circular and novels harbour a strange desire to compress all of it into a few hundred pages.
