Urvashi Bahuguna’s memoir of mental illness shares and bares her affliction, and talks of hope

The essays in ‘No Straight Thing Was Ever Made’ draw from her earlier book of poems, but now the illness follows the author everywhere.

Sana Goyal

· Apr 17, 2021 · 08:30 am

JCB Jury interview: ‘All these books are going to change conversations for better or worse’

A short conversation with Aruni Kashyap and Tejaswini Niranjana, two members of the 2020 JCB Prize for Literature jury.

Sana Goyal

· Sep 20, 2020 · 12:30 pm

How Chaya Bhuvaneswar, a doctor in the US, wrote a prizewinning debut collection of short stories

An interview with the writer of ‘White Dancing Elephants’, a book of stories exploring betrayal, violence, loss, racism, desperation, and disappearance.

Sana Goyal

· Apr 20, 2019 · 08:30 am

Why is everyone suddenly reading this Japanese novel? The translator tries to explain

The Morgan Giles interview: ‘I talked about translating the book non-stop for two years till the publisher gave in’

Sana Goyal

· Mar 24, 2019 · 06:30 pm

Just how global is the 2019 Man Booker International Prize longlist of translated fiction?

It’s not so much the individual hits and misses as the fact that large parts of the world are not represented. Are translated books from those areas so poor?

Sana Goyal

· Mar 17, 2019 · 10:30 am

To read Samanta Schweblin’s short stories is to expect a dry mouth and a loss of words

The stories in ‘Mouthful Of Birds’ were written before the Argentinian author’s acclaimed novella ‘Fever Dream’.

Sana Goyal

· Feb 09, 2019 · 07:30 am

‘Milkman’: This year’s Man Booker winner ensures we do not underestimate ourselves as readers

The critical and popular response to the novel has been decidedly mixed.

Sana Goyal

· Nov 03, 2018 · 08:30 am

In a landscape of new literary awards, what can readers take away from the DSC Prize longlist?

The 16 novels reveal attention to translations, but largely remain limited to known and expected heavyweight authors.

Sana Goyal

· Oct 13, 2018 · 05:30 pm

JCB Prize longlist: What we think about when we think about contemporary fiction from India

Ten novels that offer both common themes and unique points of divergence.

Sana Goyal

· Sep 09, 2018 · 07:00 am

An alternative literary prize aims to be what the Nobel Prize hasn’t been – inclusive and democratic

The 2018 Literature Nobel was cancelled amidst allegations of sexual assault, but the New Academy is inviting votes for an alternative prize.

Sana Goyal

· Jul 17, 2018 · 05:30 pm

‘I didn’t want the tragedy to arrive as a kind of what-will-happen-next page-turner’: Anuradha Roy

Anuradha Roy on never reading Tagore until she began researching her ‘All The Lives We Never Lived’, and why she turns to Chekov for writing inspiration.

Sana Goyal

· Jun 17, 2018 · 12:30 pm

How translator Jennifer Croft won £26,000 and the Man Booker International Prize

Croft won for her translation of ‘Flights’ from the Polish of Olga Tokarczuk’s unusual novel in fragments. This is how she did it.

Sana Goyal

· Jun 16, 2018 · 12:30 pm