Writing admin on 26 Apr 2013
My article for the New York Times India Ink: The recent bombings in Boston threw up many questions. One of the most pressing, in my somewhat narrow view, is the meaning of being brown in America. On April 17, two days after the bombs went off during the Boston Marathon, killing three people and injuring [...]
Writing admin on 01 Mar 2013
Afzal Guru was executed on February 9, 2013. A few years ago I had published a piece in PEN Magazine article that is now on BYLINER: After flights from Delhi to Jammu and then on to Srinagar, I rode north in a taxi to Sopore, closer to the Pakistan border. I’d come to Kashmir to [...]
Writing admin on 27 Aug 2012
My piece for India Ink at the New York Times: When the travel writer Trevor Fishlock went to my hometown of Patna, a journalist greeted him by saying, “Welcome to hell.” A few days later, that particular journalist, who had been zealous in his defense of the freedom of the press, was beaten unconscious. I [...]
Writing admin on 17 Jul 2012
My latest in Tehelka, Singing the Blues: A book that I read recently, and which represents the achievement of voice, is Toni Morrison’s latest novel, Home. A short novel, hardly 150 pages long, it is the distillation of a lifetime of writing practice. Here is a voice that records violence in brief, brutal detail, [...]
Writing admin on 16 Jun 2012
My piece in the new magazine Margins: It would be performance art—a bit like doing brownface, except not. The idea thrilled him as soon as it was proposed by his editors. He was to go to a few bookstores in New York City and ask: “Where is your ‘White literature’ section?” He began with McNally [...]
Writing admin on 09 Jun 2012
I will write a new monthly column for Tehelka. Here’s my first column, a report on the soon-to-be-released film, Gangs of Wasseypur: On a recent Sunday, I took the Metro North to Grand Central Station; stepped out into the warm afternoon air, and after walking for less than 10 minutes, entered a dark night in [...]
Writing admin on 25 May 2012
My review of Shehan Karunatilaka’s The Legend of Pradeep Mathew for NPR: I have just finished reading Sri Lankan writer Shehan Karunatilaka’s debut novel, The Legend of Pradeep Mathew, and to be blunt, the business of writing this review is interfering with what I really want to do. Which is watch cricket. I feel free [...]
Writing admin on 23 Apr 2012
My short-story “Postmortem” is on a short-list of works chosen from those published at World Literature Today over the past ten years. You can vote too! I had written this story originally for NPR’s Three-Minute Fiction. The nurse left work at five o’clock. She had seen the dead woman’s husband sitting, near the entrance, under [...]
Writing admin on 16 Apr 2012
A new issue of Seminar is out. It is a special issue entitled A Country of Our Own. I have fiction in this issue, “Revolutionary Road.” The piece is not available to all but here is a link to another piece of fiction by me; both pieces are part of the same novel that [...]
Writing admin on 27 Feb 2012
In the new issue of the PEN America Journal, devoted to maps, I have a short essay. The house was in an alley, set away from the winding street, and in that house were three communists who, during my first visit, sold me a book and several magazines. This was in my hometown, Patna, in [...]
