Book Review of Alejandro Zambra’s “Chilean Poet” (Granta Books, 2022) — by Dr. Chaandreyi Mukherjee

Book Review of Alejandro Zambra’s “Chilean Poet” (Granta Books, 2022) — by Dr. Chaandreyi Mukherjee

We kick off this new cycle of publishing with Dr. Chaandreyi Mukherjee’s book review of Alejandro Zambra’s “Chilean Poet” (Granta Books, 2022, translated by Megan McDowell). In this review, Mukherjee travels through Zambra’s text while contextualizing its importance within Chile’s history—with the necessary cultural and literary considerations that lend to the great value Zambra holds within Spanish American writing. The review succeeds in locating Zambra’s work within a larger heritage of Chilean poets and writers while also—and perhaps inadvertently—explaining the great allure of Zambra’s work for readers worldwide, including Dr. Mukherjee, whose enthusiasm is endearing to the need of such works being read far beyond their usual cultural and linguistic spaces—all the way from South Asian academic and literary circles.

Just Another Bus Ride — A Short Story by Aashna Jamal

Just Another Bus Ride — A Short Story by Aashna Jamal

“Just Another Bus Ride” is a story of a twelve year old girl in Srinagar who is very hungry at the close of school and worries about the bus ride home. Her thoughts are about how to best find a snack as she gets onto the bus. The bus finds itself in the middle of a tear gas shelling. The bus driver manoeuvres them out of it, with the children bewildered by the incident. The story tries to show how this child and her friends end up normalising the incident, and go on about their other childish preoccupations. This story was originally published by Muse India.

A Movement in Kashmir’s Historiography: Reviewing Khalid Bashir’s Kashmir: Looking Back in Time — Dr. Javid Ahmad Ahanger

A Movement in Kashmir’s Historiography: Reviewing Khalid Bashir’s Kashmir: Looking Back in Time — Dr. Javid Ahmad Ahanger

Dr. Javid Ahmad Ahanger reviews Khalid Bashir Ahmad’s “Kashmir: Looking Back in Time (Politics, Culture, History)” (Atlantic, 2021) situating the author’s work within a larger tradition of historiography. In the process, Dr. Ahanger evaluates Bashir’s book for the value it adds to Kashmiri scholarship during contemporary times while visiting some of the core topics and ideas that the text unveils or that had not been considered previously with the type of historical analysis it brings to fore.

Karamat Ali Khan and The Book of Memories — A Short Story by O. Kashmiri

Karamat Ali Khan and The Book of Memories — A Short Story by O. Kashmiri

In this fourth installment of the Karamat Ali Khan series of short stories, O. Kashmiri returns with a compelling fictional account of how Karamat gathered the news of killings, rapes, arrests, and disappearances in a collection of notebooks stored in his house in the Mountain Side. In an attempt to keep such horrific events from disappearing from public record and against forgetting, the old man risks his life well beyond his means and at the service of collective memory.

The Dust Never Settles Down — A Poem by Saba Zahoor

The Dust Never Settles Down — A Poem by Saba Zahoor

On World Mental Health Day, Saba Zahoor presents a series of verses that venture into the center of struggles and experiences that remain difficult to communicate yet persist in the lives of millions throughout our human world.

Fluid Transgressions and Skeptical Dislocations of the Human/Animal Binary in Montaigne’s “Man is no better than the animals” — by Sakhi Thirani

Fluid Transgressions and Skeptical Dislocations of the Human/Animal Binary in Montaigne’s “Man is no better than the animals” — by Sakhi Thirani

Of late, within emerging environmentalist and ecological discourses, it has become a fundamental and necessary practice to question any anthropocentric views of the world that we inhabit. Such questions arise to facilitate the idea of a “multispecies world” that can be constituted by a “multispecies polity”, especially when one is reminded of Donna Haraway’s affirmation that it “matters which worlds world worlds and which stories tell stories” (Cosmopolitan Animals, vii). From this more contemporary standpoint, Sakhi Thirani’s essay acquires even greater relevance as she discusses and evaluates Michel de Montaigne’s “Man is no better than animals”— an excerpt from his “Apology for Raymond Sebond” (1580-92)—to elucidate how “Montaigne posits a fluid view of parity between humans and animals by disrupting, destabilising, and dislocating the supremacy of hegemonic human institutions of intelligence, reason as well as language via his skeptical engagement with antecedent texts.”

The fact that Montaigne presented such ideas in the 16th century is as interesting and relevant as Sakhi’s observations in her critical engagement with the French Renaissance philosopher’s writing as she relies on various theoretical and philosophical ideas and sources to give shape to ideas that transcend Montaigne’s own—and not only exist in the realm of contemporary discourses but are pertinent to discourses on “multispecies sustainability” found in First Nation and Indigenous practices. While relatively brief, Thirani’s essay maintains a complexity that can facilitate multiple conversations and invite greater inquiry into multiple subjects/topics, from “cosmopolitical ecologies”, Critical Animal Studies, and the posthumanities to the “emergence of multispecies ethnography”—with her study remaining consistently focused on Montaigne’s ““Man is no better than the animals”.

On the Women’s Uprising in Iran: An Interview with Inshah Malik — by Lia Dekanadze

On the Women’s Uprising in Iran: An Interview with Inshah Malik — by Lia Dekanadze

Lia Dekanadze (of the Social Justice Center in Georgia) interviews Kashmiri political theorist and gender researcher Inshah Malik about the ongoing women’s uprising in Iran that sprang into action with 22-year-old Mahsa Amin’s tragic death under police custody. Originally published on the official website of Social Justice Center, this English translation presents an extended version of the original interview in Georgian that can be accessed here. Prompted by Lia Dekanadze’s incisive questions, Inshah Malik offers multiple critical perspectives on key topics of relevance to what is currently unfolding in Iran.

ENGLISH MEDIUM — A Poem by Rumuz E Bekhudi

ENGLISH MEDIUM — A Poem by Rumuz E Bekhudi

Rumuz E Bekhudi presents a poem that speaks to a worldwide audience of English learners or non-native speakers of English who carry with them a desire, a need and a compulsion. Rumuz’s poem betrays the brevity of its verses by thematically expanding on the significance of “English Medium” education throughout the world, inviting critique and reflection on questions of class mobility, rank, status, inclusion, exclusion, colonialism, imperial history, globalization—all tucked under the exhausted white collar of middle-class aspirations.

Tending a Bonsai or How to Read a Translated Text without Knowing the Original — by Mubashir Karim

Tending a Bonsai or How to Read a Translated Text without Knowing the Original — by Mubashir Karim

In this commentary on two translations of Alejandro Zambra’s novel “Bonsai”, Mubashir Karim performs an exercise in “literary appreciation” that functions equally well as a concise comparative study of the two translations—one by Megan McDowell and the other by Carolina de Robertis. As the commentary progresses, the linguistic expression of the original novel (in Spanish) permeates into the style of writing employed by professor Karim in his deep engagement with the two translations into English by McDowell and de Robertis.

Writing all the way from Kashmir about the two translations of a celebrated novel by a Chilean writer and poet, Mubashir Karim’s commentary directly or indirectly prompts a comparison with Kashmiri-American poet Agha Shahid Ali’s poem “I See Chile in My Rearview Mirror” as a second instance where Kashmir salutes Chile and Latin America by extension—perhaps because there is a similitude to be found in the experience of multiple histories by multiple subjects whose contemporaneity converges in the study and appreciation of the literary craft, linguistic barriers notwithstanding (“no obstante”).

Given the references to explicit uses of language in the novella, reader discretion is advised.

From Ghulam Nabi Doolwal to Janbaaz Kishtwari: The Journey of an Artist into the Heart of His People — An Essay by Garima Sudhan

From Ghulam Nabi Doolwal to Janbaaz Kishtwari: The Journey of an Artist into the Heart of His People — An Essay by Garima Sudhan

Garima Sudhan visits legendary Kashmiri singer and musician Ghulam Nabi Doolwal’s native Kishtwar to unearth his journey and transformation into Janbaaz Kishtwari. The result is an informative essay and travelogue that intimates readers with Doolwal’s legacy as a singer, musician, poet and writer—in a piece that reflects on his enduring impact on his Kishtwar, a place that remembers him all too fondly. While focused on unravelling the personal history that created the public figure of Doolwal as Janbaaz Kishtwari, Sudhan’s essay sheds light on a collective history—set in motion by his musical stature—that the writer gathers here by taking us on an excursion through his place of residence. The memorial-as-essay is interlaced with quotes from several interviews conducted by Garima, and aimed at explaining Ghulam Nabi Doolwal’s importance and significance in the lives of those who knew him and heard him sing. While shedding light on his musical work with the Chalant, the Ghazal, and the Naat, Garima Sudhan pays equal attention to his work as a writer and a poet, and as a teacher and champion of Kashmiri music.

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