Drishya

Tashan Mehta’s Mad Sisters of Esi is a novel of great conviction and imagination that encompasses and moves across vast swathes of space and time and focuses on the intimate and the interpersonal: the desire for understanding the universe and

Radhika Iyengar’s book Fire on the Ganges is an indictment that compels us to confront our own positions—and complicity—in perpetuating the caste system by looking away from the ugly and uncomfortable sight of burning corpses, write Drishya Maity in

Murakami’s men are not so much alone as they are solitary individuals without an emotional centre, without any firm emotional connections that tether them to their world, Drishya Maity writes

Zeyad Masroor Khan’s City on Fire : A Boyhood in Aligarh is a compulsively readable personal account of coming of age as an Indian Muslim man and, at the same time, it is also an oral history of Aligarh, writes Drishya Maity.

“Why do fairy tales fascinate us? Why do they stay by our side long after we hear them and become our little pieces of pleasure?”

The modern Indian novel has been around for longer than is generally realised, with the earliest attempt at the literary form dating to the 19th century when the Bengali writer Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay wrote Rajmohan’s Wife — widely regarded as

Human beings have always been fascinated with the collapse of their contemporary social order. Since the beginning of human civilization, the end of human civilization has remained a recurring theme in our religious, cultural, philosophical, and

India’s long and distinguished literary history goes back to 1500 BCE when the epic poems of the Indian subcontinent were first recorded in written form. Since then, India has produced several poets and writers who have produced remarkable works of

We live in interesting times defined by historical global catastrophes, and if there is one thing that’s true about history, it’s that it repeats itself. Longform narrative nonfiction helps us understand the world in the wake of historical shock

In recent years, Western novelists have increasingly focused on South Asia as the theatre for exploring their greatest concerns about climate change — recognising the region’s fragile and volatile ecologies as the centrestage for impending climate

February 1934. British India. Calcutta—until recently the seat of government for the vast empire stretching from the plains of Afghanistan to the Burma frontier—is scandalized by news of a sensational murder so diabolical in planning and so cold in

Mumbai, formerly Bombay, is a city made of dreams and nightmares as much as it is made of stone, bricks, mortar, and steel. Home to Bollywood — India’s largest film industry — and its many stars, Mumbai is touched by the overpowering, exhausting,

Kolkata—formerly Calcutta, briefly the capital of British India—is a city of stories. Home to many prolific writers, poets, filmmakers, actors and artists, few cities in the world embody the personality of an entire people the way Kolkata does. It

Poetry — often considered the oldest form of literature, predating the written word by several millennia — is still as relevant as ever. From love poems to elegies, and ancient epics to poems of protest, resistance, and revolution, the far-reaching

At a quarter to eleven on August 12, 2022, on a sunny Friday morning in upstate New York, Salman Rushdie was attacked and almost killed by a young man with a knife. He was standing on stage at the amphitheatre in the Chautauqua Institution,

“A story is not like a road to follow… it’s more like a house. You go inside and stay there for a while, wandering back and forth and settling where you like and discovering how the room and corridors relate to each other, how the world outside is

There is something dark, exciting and just a little bit naughty about college life, with a liminality or ‘in-betweenness’ that has continually been an irresistible and potent playground for writers of all ages. From A.S. Byatt’s all-time classic to

“She is twelve years old, and she will be married in the morning.”