Short Story | ‘No one like Appa’: A Tamil story in translation
Translated from Tamil by Prabha Sridevan. An eccentric father mentors his family, ignoring societal norms. Appa was a strange person. My thatha, my grandfather, said that his strangeness was due to the fact he had left home when he was sixteen and wandered around before returning. But that was not the only
Abu Abraham (1924–2002), the political cartoonist who bore witness
In the world of journalism, there is enough scholarship on the role of reporting as bearing witness, investigative journalism, design elements, editorial judgment, and the balance between the public interest component and another powerful component called “what the public is interested in”. If this scholarship has to be more effective,
‘Hindi filmmakers should go back to the drawing board’: Manoj Bajpayee
The team of The Fable was jumping up and down—for joy and for Instagram—in the mid century modernist foyer of Berlin’s Akademie der Künste (Academy of Arts) building. Manoj Bajpayee, 54, stood graciously for the first few photographs, and then sat down a little to the left of where his
Obituary | Surjit Patar, the poet who explored Punjab’s collective consciousness
The celebrated poet, who passed away at 79, explored the region’s cultural richness and pluralism, giving voice to its struggles and aspirations. As I think of Surjit Patar, this following verse, which I had first heard on radio during my college days, reverberates in my mind: Je ayi pathjhar taa
International Booker Prize 2024 | In ‘Kairos’, Jenny Erpenbeck offers an East German perspective
Ask your average German about Jenny Erpenbeck, and they may very well respond, “Jenny who?” Yet the contemporary German author has made a name for herself beyond Germany’s borders; she’s showered with prizes and has even been predicted to one day win the Nobel Prize in literature. Her books have
All We Imagine as Light, Malayalam-Hindi film by film FTII alumnus Payal Kapadia, makes history, wins Grand Prix award at Cannes 2024
Director Payal Kapadia poses after she won the Grand Prix for the film All We Imagine as Light during the Closing Ceremony at the 77th edition of the Cannes Film Festival in Cannes, southern France, on May 25, 2024. | Photo Credit: LOIC VENANCE Payal Kapadia has scripted history by
Venice Biennale 2024 aims to deconstruct the Eurocentric gaze
With its storied history dating back to 1895 and a scenic setting for the thought-provoking art it showcases (although La Serenissima has been overrun by selfie-seekers lately), the Venice Biennale is a gift that keeps giving. This year’s landmark 60th edition, titled “Stranieri Ovunque—Foreigners Everywhere” (April 20-November 24, 2024), curated
Interview with Amal Allana on the biography of her father, theatre director Ebrahim Alkazi
The March 22 launch in New Delhi of the theatre director and art gallery owner Amal Allana’s biography of her father, the multifaceted Ebrahim Alkazi (1925-2020), was unusual in many ways. Allana organised a reading of passages from the biography (titled Ebrahim Alkazi: Holding Time Captive) in a kind of partial
Birds of the air: A Hindi story in translation
Translated by Vanashree and Bindu Singh A story from an influential voice of small-town India about two spirited young vagabonds, and their strange bonding. When the bagghi-cart driver felt that a naughty boy was swinging on the back door footboard, he swirled his whip, yelling: “Get down, you bastard!” Haribol—Harbolwa—jumped down, giggling, and
2024 Women’s Prizes: V.V. Ganeshananthan wins Fiction award for ‘Brotherless Night’; Naomi Klein takes inaugural non-fiction honours for ‘Doppelganger’
The Sri Lankan Tamil-origin author’s novel highlights the “epic-scale tragedies of the Sri Lankan civil war”. American writer V.V. Ganeshananthan won this year’s Women’s Prize for Fiction on June 13 for her novel Brotherless Night, about a family torn apart by Sri Lanka’s long civil war. Its sister award, the