All information sourced from publishers’s blurbs.
Maria, Just Maria, Sandhya Mary, translated from the Malayalam by Jayasree Kalathil
Following the death of her grandfather, Maria has stopped speaking – not because she can’t, but because she doesn’t want to.
Now in a psychiatric hospital, as she begins the process of “reconnecting with reality”, Maria recalls her journey of being “just Maria” – a girl born into a Syrian Christian family in Kerala, whose companions were a grandfather who took her along to wander around the village and its toddy shops, a great-aunt with dementia who challenged Maria’s position as the youngest in the family, a dog with a penchant for philosophy, various long-dead family members including a great-grandmother with a knack for prophecies, a patron saint who insisted on interfering in people’s affairs, and Karthav Eesho Mishiha with whom Maria has regular conversations.
Vazhga Vazhga and Other Stories, Imayam, translated from the Tamil by Prabha Sridevan
Imayam is considered one of the most important Tamil writers today and this powerful collection of stories reveals just why that is. Whether he is depicting a lack of political morality in the novella Vazhga Vazhga, questioning whether religion unifies or divides, the writer’s unsparing gaze on society gently and subtly reveals the inequalities people must live with and navigate.
Maili Chadar; or, The Stained Shawl and Truth and Justice: Two Plays, Shanta Gokhale
What is the fate of justice when morality is subservient to power? What happens when people in power lose their moral compass and truth becomes a casualty? This volume brings together two recent plays by eminent Indian theatre personality Shanta Gokhale that address these burning questions.
Maili Chadar; or, The Stained Shawl: A Tragedy in Four Acts traces the regression of the protagonist from the idealism of his youth to the cynicism of a man who has but one goal in life – power at all costs. Along the way, he develops a megalomanic sense of destiny for which he is willing to lose all that he has ever loved, in the process becoming an exemplar of the proverbial worm in the apple called democracy. In Truth and Justice: Four Monologues, women from different places and times speak of what men in power have done to them in the name of their hatred for the other – from the Dreyfus affair that rocked France in the 19th century to the deadly communal riots in Gujarat and the Sri Lankan Civil War in the early 21st century.
Acts of God, Kanan Gill
In a post-nuclear winter world, now free from borders, war, poverty and overpopulation, the smartest man on the planet is working on the most illegal thing imaginable. Once a celebrated scientist for whom the Authority had to come up with an entirely new “Genius Category 3”, Dr K has resigned as the head of the Scientific Institute and now spends his days in a hungover, crotchety haze, relegated to working on a trifling project. But unknown to everyone else, he is obsessively simulating universes, intervening in these simulations, and when they fail to achieve what he wants, terminating them.
But all of his delicate interferences to nudge these simulated realities in the right direction inevitably come up short against the most unlikely spanner in the works – bumbling private detective P Manjunath.
Silk and Steel: A Novel, Stephen Alter
Amid the opulence and brutality of 19th-century India, colourful bandits fight for survival.
James Webley – a brave but erratic English commander – has joined forces with the romantic Colonel Augustine, son of an Englishwoman and a noble Indian. Together they have rejected the rigours of mercenary service to pursue a lawless career of pillage.
Augustine hopes to find a way of maintaining their cornered brigand army against the British forces that seek to destroy it. He devises a subtle and devious plan to regenerate Webley’s flagging spirits, employing the fascinating Khasturba. As his scheme goes into operation, the drama heightens towards its gripping and disastrous climax.
The Murderer’s Mother, Mahasweta Devi, translated from the Bengali by Arunava Sinha
The novel takes readers to the late 1970s in West Bengal, where the Communist Party-led Left Front has just been voted into power. It tells the story of Tapan, who has been installed as a gang leader by the most powerful man in the locality to kill “unwanted obstacles,” which he does, one after another. Tapan knows there is no other way he can earn a living, but at the same time, he is desperate to protect his family. He tries to stop petty crime and assaults on women, even as he protects his patron’s interests. Through the dissonance, he becomes both a feared and revered figure, but his patron’s game becomes clear: now the murderer, too, must be eliminated.
Disclosure: Arunava Sinha is the editor of the Books and Ideas section of Scroll.
