Janice Pariat

Mitra Phukan

Paro Anand

Manjula Padmanabhan

Bulbul Sharma

Uddipana Goswami

Pratyaksha

Venita Coelho.

Bulbul Sharma, Janice Pariat, Manjula Padmanabhan, Mitra Phukan, Paro Anand, Pratyaksha, Uddipana Goswami, Venita Coelho. Eight of India's best fiction writers come together to produce a book of intrigue and murders most foul.
In Mitra Phukan's story that opens this edge-of-the-seat anthology, She Stoops to Kill: Stories of Crime and Passion, a singing diva chokes to death onstage. The weapon is a poisoned paan--but who would want her dead? And Pratyaksha follows Mitra's entrée with the murder of an equally glamorous victim--air hostess Ginny Kalra. Bulbul Sharma, in 'Murder in the Wedding Season', creates a cosy setting for a wedding in Shimla; but the guests include a politician and a timorous widow whose past will disrupt the party in ways no one had imagined. And in Uddipana Goswami's 'Beloved of Flowers', a folktale about a girl reborn as a lotus leads young Dino to the truth behind a mysterious disappearance.
Manjula Padmanabhan's 'Serial Killer' brilliantly explores what it is like to be a perfectly normal person--except that you enjoy the act of murder. While Janice Pariat's delicately nuanced 'The Nurse' shows us another side of death altogether. In the penultimate story by Venita Coelho, Sister, a vigilante eunuch, helps the police solve a gruesome killing in a city slum. And Paro Anand brings the collection to a grand finale with a story that begins with lust and ends with a murder--or two--that may or may not have happened.
By turns chilling, horrific and morbidly fascinating, She Stoops to Kill: Stories of Crime and Passion, is a steaming witches' cauldron of stories that will keep you riveted, page after page.

Stories of Crime and Passion

She Stoops To Kill

WHAT WILL PEOPLE SAY? A NOVEL

This is the story of Rukmini who is married to the District Collector of a small town in Assam, and teaches English literature in the local college. On the surface, her life is settled and safe in the big, beautiful bungalow on the hill above the cremation ground, seemingly untouched by the toil and sufferings of the common folk living 'below'. And yet, each time there is an 'incident' in the district, the fear and uncertainty that grips the town finds a reflection in her own life. Assam is in the grip of insurgency and it is this thread that runs like a dark river through the novel and forms its backdrop.

The Collector's Wife

Arunava Sinha

Lucy Hannah

stories from Assam

A Fistful of Moonlight

The Greatest Assamese Stories Ever Told spans more than a century of work by some of the finest writers of short fiction in the language. The storytellers range from literary masters such as Lakhminath Bezbaroa, Mamoni Raisom Goswami, Saurav Kumar Chaliha, Birendra Kumar Bhattacharyya, and Homen Borgohain to contemporary writers like Harekrishna Deka, Debabrata Das, and Kuladhar Saikia. Among the gems to be found in this selection are Lakhminath Bezbaroa's 'Patmugi' which is a searing portrayal of the injustices of society, especially towards women; Mamoni Raisom Goswami's 'Values', an unforgettable depiction of a destitute woman, for whom her Brahmin ancestry is the only thing that she can take pride in; Harekrishna Deka's 'The Captive', a poignant account of the relationship between a kidnapper and his victim; Homen Borgohain's well-known story 'Looking for Ismael Sheikh', which deals with the effects of religious violence on a community; and Sheelabhadra's 'Sweet Acacia', a romance as evocative as the delicate fragrance of the flower that permeates it. Selected and edited by Mitra Phukan, these and the other stories in this volume offer a fascinating glimpse of a culture and a people that will resonate with readers everywhere.

The Greatest Assamese Stories Ever Told

A musician never realized the truth of the saying 'Music is a harsh taskmaster' until his beloved instrument exacts the highest sacrifice. An unfaithful husband is baffled: his wife grows more and more perfect until she literally becomes the goddess of plenty. A loving mother is naturally distraught at the kidnapping of her son by insurgents...or is she? And Modon Sur, with the spoils of a full night's thievery in tow, finds himself in a sticky situation on a black amavasya night. In this collection, Mitra Phukan sounds the rhythms of contemporary Assamese society, deftly weaving universal themes of love, loss and ageing with some of the issues facing the region: militancy, witchcraft, and the breakdown of traditional ways of life. Her stories acutely depict people's struggles to relate to each other across vast social gulfs and within the intricacies of family and love. Intimate, allusive, and wryly observed, A Full Night's Thievery is a finely drawn portrait of humanity by one of the most prominent literary voices in Assam today.

Stories

A Full Night's Thievery

If music be the food of love…four musicians are about to feast. Against the backdrop of a magnificent musical heritage and the haunting and timeless ragas that sweep through these stirring pages, Mitra Phukan presents the ambitious sitarist Kaushik Kashyap, already a ‘name’, who tours the world; Nomita, the shy, small-town vocalist, whom Kaushik’s parents have chosen for him; the beautiful, calm Sandhya Senapati and her handsome husband, who both seem to be hiding deep, dark secrets. As the eventful monsoon months give way to autumn, the characters come to a deeper understanding of themselves as their lives change dramatically and forever. By turns serious, deeply moving and utterly irreverent, Mitra Phukan’s eye for detail, her immense knowledge of Hindustani music and her profound understanding of human nature come together in this wonderfully evocative novel. “The duality between spirituality and materialism... old-world images and modern performers, a gentle satire on the ambitions of today’s youngsters... all find a place in the novel.”—The Hindu Published by Zubaan.

A Monsoon of Music

Mitra Phukan

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