nilanjana s roy

Month: May 2016

  • A writer’s conscience, and protests

    A writer’s conscience, and protests

    A major Indian literary festival chooses to partner with a corporate sponsor of dubious track record. The JLF Southbank festival is in London; a few weeks before it starts, a campaign asks writers to boycott the festival, citing Vedanta’s track record on tribal and adivasi rights. Some campaigners trash the culture of literary festivals, calling […]

  • In Translation: I, The Salt Doll by Vandana Mishra

    In Translation: I, The Salt Doll by Vandana Mishra

      “A salt doll spends time frolicking on the shore, building sand castles or collecting shells. Enamoured as she is of the deep, calm sea…, one day the salt doll decides to enter the blue waters for a good bath. And never returns.” This brief note, slipped lightly in by the translator, Jerry Pinto, beautifully […]

  • Speaking Volumes: Han Kang and (in)humanity

    Speaking Volumes: Han Kang and (in)humanity

    May is an ominous month for students. In 1989, thousands of students spent the month marching and gathering in Tiananmen Square in Beijing, after the death of the liberal reformer Hu Yaobang. The answer to their demands for democratic reform and more freedoms came on May 20, when martial law was declared in Beijing. Citizens […]

  • The Girl Who Ate Books

    The Girl Who Ate Books

      “The two of us loved books and reading and authors for no good reason except that it had been encoded in our DNA by the previous generations, because we had lived in homes where everyone read books, as a matter of course. My father had grown up in a small town with a tiny […]