Category: A2Z Challenge

Ireland is equally famous for its literature and long tradition of fantastic storytelling as it is for its Guinness. Kevin Barry from Limerick City follows the same tradition of storytelling which reads like a modern-day Dubliners. Born in 1969, Kevin has to wait for his first ever story collection gets published. “There are little kingdoms” was published in 2007 and it received a huge critical acclaim and won the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature.

While describing his feeling about getting published after such a long wait, Kevin confessed to “haunting bookshops and hiding to spy on the short fiction section and see if anyone’s tempted by my sweet bait” in his interview to The Short Review. This collection contained 13 stories which have been written over a span of 7 years. These stories and the characters developed by Kevin are full of laughter as well as darkness with the intensity of contemporary Irish life. I am excited about these stories because they comment on the life’s absurdity and uncertainty. Laura Farmer while reviewing his second story collection ‘Dark lies the island’ in The Gazette has described Kevin as “If Roddy Doyle and Nick Cave could procreate, the result would be something like Kevin Barry.”

This is yet another very short book just about 160 pages. My love for short writings is increasing day by day as I am coming across these amazing storytellers whose stories are almost written for me. Short, packed with human life and absurdity of life. Come join me in enjoying some Irish lifestyle.

Amazon

Paperback: 160 pages

Publisher: Canongate Canons (6 April 2017)

Language: English

ISBN-10: 1786890178

ISBN-13: 978-1786890177

Adding this to the amazing bucket of blogs at #BlogchatterA2Z.

“Jhumpa Lahiri is the kind of writer who makes you want grab the next person you see and say “Read this!” She’s a dazzling storyteller with a distinctive voice, an eye for nuance, an ear for irony. She is one of the finest short story writers I’ve read” – Amy Tan

When you read such praising words for some storyteller, you don’t think twice before picking up her book as your TBR. Jhumpa Lahiri is Bengali storyteller born in England and brought up in Rhod Island USA. There’s a debate about her ‘Indian’ness as she hasn’t been in India for a major part of her life, but her stories revolve around Indians and Indian migrants in the west. Many of her stories are published in the American journal The New Yorker including The Long Way Home and Cooking Lessons. Her debut story “collection Interpreter of Maladies has won a prestigious Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and is my pick for this TBR entry of Adi’s Journal.

The stories in this collection revolve around the lives of Indian immigrants focusing on the issues like generation gap between the first and second generation of Indian Americans, loss of a child and failing marriage, demanding jobs of a new society and the culture shocks they receive. She later wrote in one of her essay on in Newsweek (http://www.newsweek.com/my-two-lives-106355), “When I first started writing I was not conscious that my subject was the Indian-American experience. What drew me to my craft was the desire to force the two worlds I occupied to mingle on the page as I was not brave enough, or mature enough, to allow in life.”

I personally believe that “Whether set in Boston or Bengal, these sublimely understated stories, spiced with humour and subtle detail, speak with universal eloquence to anyone who has ever felt the yearnings of exile or the emotional confusion of the outsider.” as mentioned in the blurb of Interpreter of Maladies. I am going to pick this book as soon as I am finished with my current readings. The book has just over 200 pages and that’s the length I enjoy most than lengthy volumes. So, guys if you also like grab this collection, go visit a nearby bookshop or click on the following link

Amazon

Flipkart

Paperback: 208 pages

Publisher: Harper Collins Publishers India; (Reissue) edition (5 September 2005)

Language: English

ISBN-10: 817223502X

ISBN-13: 978-8172235024

I am adding this to the amazing bucket of blogs at #BlogchatterA2Z.

Yesterday, I took you to Assam to meet one of India’s fantastic storyteller Homen Borgohain. Today I would like to take you in 18^th century Russia to meet Mr. Ivan Turgenev, one of the finest Russian novelist, short story writer, poet, playwright. It is said that he is the man behind popularizing Russian literature in the West. While East India Company were busy in clutching the power across India, Ivan Turgenev was writing fantastic stories about the Russian society.

Ivan Turgenev was a keen hunter and a great observer of his surroundings and the life and nature of peasants. He had written twenty-five sketches using these observations and anecdotes from the travels throughout Russia for hunting. These sketches are published as a collection with a title A Sportsman’s Sketches or Sketches from a Hunter’s Album. It is translated by Richard Freeborn and published by Penguin as a Penguin Classics and its blurb says “His album is filled with moving insights into the lives of those he encounters – peasants and landowners, doctors and bailiffs, neglected wives and bereft mothers – each providing a glimpse of love, tragedy, courage and loss, and anticipating Turgenev’s great later works such as First Love and Fathers and Sons.”

Considering Turgenev’s later works, it won’t be wrong to conclude that his travels across the country made him witness the cruelty and arrogance of the ruling classes and that reflects in his works. These strong views were the reasons behind his arrest but they became the window to the plight of peasant lives for many contemporary readers. In the mind of Turgenev himself, this was the most important contribution from him to Russian literature while it is reported that Pravda: The official newspaper of Communist Party of the Soviet Union, as well as Leo Tolstoy, was in agreement with this view about Sketches from a Hunter’s Album. It is also considered that this book later led to the abolishment of serfdom from Russia in 1861 as it created a vast public opinion against serfdom.

I find this collection as a window to the 19th-century Russian society and I am eager to know about it more than the wiki pages tell us. If you are interested in this trip to 19^th century Russia, come join me.

Book purchase link

Amazon

Paperback: 416 pages

Publisher: Penguin; Reprint edition (30 August 1990)

Language: English

ISBN-10: 0140445226

ISBN-13: 978-0140445220

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When I wrote about George Saunders, I wrote about the choices we make every day. However, sometimes you are not satisfied with the choice. I am facing the same dilemma about the author I had chosen for letter H. No doubt Henry James is a fabulous storyteller from the transition period of realism to modernism. My mind was not able to connect with him. I was searching for new name, new figure to look up to. I summoned the services of “Uncle Google” but no satisfactory results came out. I wrapped my work for the day and head out to Crossword to window-shop with my friend. She picked up a couple of books and we were ready to head back to home. Just before we get to the counter, I met Homen Borgohain in form of a beautiful hardbound story collection and I took him home with me.

Homen is a fantastic storyteller from our own Assam. He is a writer and journalist by profession, working as a chief-editor at Assamese daily newspaper Niyomiya Barta. Homen comes from a rural area of Assam but he has a deep knowledge about urban complexities which is evident in his writing. This book is a collection of the English translations of Homen’s novellas and short stories. His son Pradipta Borgohain has translated these gems from Assamese literature into English and I am very thankful to him for this. Otherwise, how on the earth, bibliophile like me would be able to enjoy these fantastic stories from one of most beautiful lands of my country. As mentioned in the burb of the book, the stories from this collection are rooted in realism, steeped in irony and underlined with humor and pathos. Homen’s deep understanding of human psyche, relationships and society in general.

The Collected Works of Homen Borgohain Book is published by Amaryllis, New Delhi 2017. This sturdy and a lightweight hardbound book have an amazing floral painting done in watercolor designed by Seema Sethi. The font and the font size used for the book is eye-pleasing even in low lights of your bedposts, it doesn’t put excessive stress on your eyes. I am struggling to complete this post before I start reading the book. So, guys, stop wasting your time and grab your copy of this gorgeous book from a bookstore near you or you can pick it from the following link.

Amazon

Hardcover: 398 pages
Publisher: Amaryllis; 1 edition (17 May 2017)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 9381506965
ISBN-13: 978-9381506967

Are you a fan of science or dystopian fiction? Come let me introduce you to the ideator of this genre of writing. Franz Kafka, German Speaking Bavarian Jew, is one of the important names from the 20th-century literary world. Kafka wrote his stories where the protagonist is always put in surreal, bizarre situations created by social-bureaucratic powers. The protagonist is always struggling with an existential crisis, absurdity, guilt and alienation in Kafka’s stories. His work and writing style has been inspirational for many of the 20th-century writers like Gorge Orwell and Ray Bradbury.

Very few of his work got published during his lifetime before tuberculosis took a toll on his life at the age of 40. He has ordered his friend Max Brod to destroy his unpublished and unfinished work but after Kafka’s death, he simply ignored and published those works and gifted the literary work some of his amazing novels and short stories.

The book I am taking up in my “to be read” list is a vintage classic edition of Kafka’s stories. Vintage has published The Complete Short Stories of Franz Kafka in 1992 covering all his short writing from fragments, parables and sketches to longer stories. It gives justice to the verity in Kafka’s writing. Hope you will also enjoy this surreal realist.

You can grab your copy from the following link.

Amazon

Paperback: 544 pages

Publisher: RHUK; New edition (19 March 1992)

Language: English

ISBN-10: 0749399465

ISBN-13: 978-0749399467

Product Dimensions: 12.9 x 3.4 x 19.8 cm

Adding this to the amazing bucket of blogs at #BlogchatterA2Z.