Seventeen

WINNER OF THE 2011 ECONOMIST-CROSSWORD BOOK AWARD FOR TRANSLATION

A brother and sister visit the unique crater-lake that their dead, estranged mother had written to them about in her letters. A middle-class employee’s orderly life turns upside down when his employer holds back his cheque without an explanation. The employees of a forgotten outpost in a sun-baked town threaten mass suicide because they have no hope of survival.

Seventeen is a collection of short stories from among more than 100 of Anita Agnihotri’s published short fiction. By turn intense, brittle, angry sad and torn apart in conflict, the stories bring out the different faces of human hardship and explore the India that is still largely unknown. Set in metros and villages, in small-town India and in international suburbia, the stories run the gamut of experiences both everyday and extraordinary. From deeply personal relationships against the backremove of turmoil to intensely social truths told through the unique life of individuals, each of these stories is a picture of human fragility. This is literary craftsmanship at its best.