Anita Agnihotri Archives

Are you going to Jaipur? Well, we are, and we hope you’re coming along too. And if you do find yourself there, don’t forget to look out for our Zubaan authors. They won’t always be by the bar or schmoozing with fellow literati, but they’ll be around, in conversation with other authors and in panel discussions. How do you recognise them? Well, here’s our little guide to Zubaan @ the Jaipur Literature Festival.

Day 1

January 20, 2012

5.15-6.15pm:

‘Prison Diaries’

Anjum Zamarud Habib will be in conversation with Iftikhar Gilani, Sahil Maqbool on a panel moderated by Siddharth Vardarajan.

Day 3

January 22, 2012

3.45-4.45pm

‘Amaar Bangla’

Zubaan author Anita Agnihotri will be in conversation with Malashri Lal along with Radha Chakravarthy and Fakrul Alam.

Supported by Ministry of External Affairs (SAARC Division)

Day 5

January 24, 2012

12.30-1.30pm

‘Women Writing Conflict’

Zubaan authors Anita Agnihotri and Mitra Phukan will be on a panel along with Devi Rajab, moderated by Urvashi Butalia.

3.45-4.45pm

‘The Good Girls Come to Jaipur: Last Words from Lovely Ladies’

Annie Zaidi, author of Zubaan’s The Bad Boy’s Guide to the Good Indian Girl will be in conversation with Qaisra Shahraz, Manisha Kulshreshta and Samit Basu on a panel moderated by Nisha Susan.

A little bit about our authors:

Anita Agnihotri

Anita Agnihotri is a bureaucrat and administrator. She has worked extensively with tribal communities who provide the content for her moving and poetic writing. She has authored over 30 books that include novels, collections, and short stories, and it is this last genre that is the closest to her heart. Her collections of stories include Forest Interludes, which has been translated into Swedish, and Seventeen, published by Zubaan.

Anjum Zamarud Habib

Anjum Zamarud Habib is the founder of Muslim Khawateen Markaz which was established in 1990 to work for the welfare of women. A year after her release from prison, she founded the Association for the Families of Kashmiri Prisoners and is currently conducting a survey on Kashmiri prisoners in jails in India and their families.

Annie Zaidi

Annie Zaidi is the author of Known Turf: Bantering with Bandits and Other True Tales, and the co-author of The Bad Boy’s Guide to the Good Indian Girl, Or The Good Indian to Living, Loving, and Having Fun.

Mitra Phukan

Mitra Phukan is a writer, translator, columnist, ethnomusicologist and classical vocalist. Her published literary works include four children’s books, a biography, and a novel,The Collector’s Wife. Her most recent work is another novel, A Monsoon of Music. Her short stories have appeared in numerous anthologies. Her works have been translated into several languages.

For more details, check out the Jaipur Literature Festival Website

Happy New Year Folks!

We’re ushering in 2012 with some fantastic new titles that are wonderfully written and make for an excellent read. Poignant, political and provocative, that seems to be the three qualities these titles share with each other.

First up, we have Easterine Kire’s Bitter Wormwood. If you’re at all interested in the politics of India’s Northeast, this book is right up your alley, and if your knowledge of Nagaland is limited to Akhuni and Raja mirchi, then this book is the perfect introduction. You can buy your copy here. Read Easterine’s introduction to the book for free right here on The Zubaan Blog.

Next, we have Saswati Sengupta’s The Song Seekers. As the monsoon rains wash over the city of Kolkata, four women sit and read and talk in the kitchen of Kailash?the old mansion of the Chattopadhyays where Uma comes to live after her marriage in the summer of 1962.

Her husband s silence about his mother and the childhood tragedy that beckons him from the shadowy landing of Kailash, the embroidered handkerchiefs in an old soap box in her father-in-law s room and the presence of the old, green-eyed Pishi intrigue Uma. But it is only as she begins to read aloud the traditional Chandimangal composed by her husband s grandfather to celebrate the goddess that the smothered stories begin to emerge…

The novel weaves in the history of the militant goddess recast as wife, the Portuguese in Bengal, the rise of print and the making of memories from the swadeshi movement to the turbulent sixties in Bengal as Uma discovers that the foundation of Kailash is not only very deep but also camouflages the stench of death.”

You can pick up your copy here

And we have Seventeen, a brilliant new collection by Anita Agnihotri, translated by Arunava Sinha. 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.

Pick up your copy here

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