Samanta Schweblin haunts and mesmerizes in this extraordinary, masterful collection.Schweblin's stories have the feel of a sleepless night, where every shadow and bump in the dark take on huge implications, leaving your pulse racing, and the line between the real and the strange blur.

    Yes, it will be dangerous, frequently brutal, and often devastating. But it’s also savagely funny, deliriously strange, and absolutely brimming with adventure.In these edgy, unexpected tales, a body-hopping mercenary avenges his pet elephant, and an orphan falls in love with a sentient starship. Fighters ally to power a reality-bending engine, and a swamp-dwelling introvert tries to save the world—from her plague-casting former wife.So come meet Kameron Hurley in the future. The version she's created here is weirder—and far more hopeful—than you could ever imagine.

    From the title story told by a woman suffering from gaps in her memory, to one about a man seeking insight in bags of garbage, to a surreal story about a car salesman and the customer he tries to seduce, The Woman Next Door charms and provokes with an incomparable style.

    Whether through the falsified historical record of the uniquely weird Swedish creature known as the “Pyret” or the title story, “Jagannath,” about a biological ark in the far future, Tidbeck’s unique imagination will enthrall, amuse, and unsettle you. How else to describe a collection that includes “Cloudberry Jam,” a story that opens with the line “I made you in a tin can”? Marvels, quirky character studies, and outright surreal monstrosities await you in what is likely to be one of the most talked-about short story collections of the year.Tidbeck is a rising star in her native country, having published a collection there in Swedish, won a prestigious literary grant, and just sold her first novel to Sweden’s largest publisher. A graduate of the iconic Clarion Writer’s Workshop at the University of California, San Diego, in 2010, her publication history includes Weird Tales, Shimmer Magazine, Unstuck Annual and the anthology Odd.

    Set in the American Midwest, England, and India (Mumbai, Ahmedabad, rural Gujarat) the stories in Each of Us Killers are about people trying to realize their dreams and aspirations through their professions. Whether they are chasing money, power, recognition, love, or simply trying to make a decent living, their hunger is as intense as any grand love affair. Straddling the fault lines of race, class, caste, gender, nationality, globalization, and more, they go against sociocultural norms despite challenges and indignities until singular moments of quiet devastation turn the worlds of these characters—auto-wallah, housemaid, street vendor, journalist, architect, baker, engineer, saree shop employee, professor, yoga instructor, bartender, and more—upside down."Challenging assumptions, confronting power, manipulating barriers whenever possible-even at grave personal cost-Bhatt's cast surprises, inspires, frightens, beguiles, but never disappoints." ~Shelf Awareness (starred review)Most anticipated debuts of 2020 at Electric Literature, Literary Hub, The Millions, Kirkus Reviews, Entropy Magazine, Debutiful, Ms. Magazine, Bustle. Best story collections of 2020 at Bustle and Largehearted Boy. Best collections of 2020 by Asian authors at Book Riot.". . . rich debut . . . a powerful expression of the hunger for success on one's own terms." ~Publishers Weekly". . . nuanced, clear-eyed tales of unvarnished humanity. [...] A formally diverse collection with exquisitely crafted stories about longing, striving, and learning what we can control." ~Kirkus Reviews"With this powerful, complex work, Bhatt should be launched into a wider readership that is fully deserved, and the literary world should rejoice in discovering a bright new star." ~Dallas Morning News. . . you will feel that you have encountered this level of skill, craft, and complexity before in reading the masters of the short story genre--even while the author subverts what we so often encounter in the genre about notions of loss and lonely voices and who gets to tell their own stories." ~Texas Public Radio". . . Bhatt peels back shells of self-awareness, revealing understandings of the often subtle distinctions of gender, race, and family expectations that define and confine them." ~The National Book Review". . . Bhatt gets under the skin of her characters with an ease that is difficult to achieve when creating characters beyond the pale of capital and caste. [. . .] using lively, sculpted language that avoids the stilted, literary English often afflicting Indian English writing." ~The Hindu". . . variety of literary techniques of plot, style, and voice--including the refreshing second-person singular and first-person plural--Bhatt's stories effortlessly straddle class, caste, gender, and race divides spanning the US, England, and India." ~Open The Magazine"Taken together, [the stories] show Bhatt's wide range, both in theme and style, and her ability to inhabit characters who couldn't be more different from each other." ~New York Journal of Books"Interspersing loss and longing, survival and success, in an array of memories, shades, moods, dreams [. . .] Bhatt packs in a powerful compilation, rich in prose and poetry . . ." ~NRI Pulse". . . brings a range of lived experience, experimentation, and stylistic variety, which announces a seasoned practitioner rather than a newcomer to fiction." ~India Currents". . . a collection that is as important in the telling as in remembering the times we live in and the times to come." ~The Hindu Business Line"Bhatt's deliberate expansion of established tropes about Indians and the Indian diaspora deserves special accolades." ~Leonard Prize 2020 Nominations, National Book Critics Circle" . . . exploration of South Asian identity in the workplace through a wide lens instead of the traditional representations. . ." ~Puerto del Sol". . . characters who are bound to their work, either by choice or circumstance, as they attempt to thwart societal expectations and break down barriers . . ." ~Phoebe Journal". . . as compulsively readable as it is sharp and as enjoyable as it is thought-provoking [. . .] an accomplished and impressive debut." ~Vagabond City"[. . .] interact with multiple voices, listening to the struggles of various characters, and enjoying cultural details through the incredible use of language and literary techniques [. . .] the entire collection is an enlightening voyage." ~Platform Magazine"Jenny Bhatt's gorgeous stories in Each of Us Killers remind me why I love to read a good book. It is such a pleasure to be immersed in the worlds of her characters, in their hunger for love or money, and in their local and global struggles to live. With mouth-watering detail, Bhatt serves up a rich and varied feast." ~Devi S. Laskar, Author of The Atlas of Reds and Blues"The potent stories in this collection evoke the complexities of a shifting, multilingual world with great precision. Bhatt moves between countries and realities with tremendous skill and insight." ~Idra Novey, author of Those Who Knew"In a series of thrilling, beautiful stories, Jenny Bhatt moves through the moods, thoughts, subversions involved in the experience of interracial relationships, East-West communications, theft, justice, migration. The collection works brilliantly both as an evocative amalgam of insightful observations about race, class, gender, aspirations, as well as on the sentence level. Bhatt writes, "polish it carefully, till it glitters with the hope of a false diamond and refracts your stark life into a spectrum of luminous rays, lighting up the darkness briefly"-referring to a character's particular memory, but could just as well be referring to the collection as a whole." ~Chaya Bhuvaneswar, Author of White Dancing Elephants"In Each of Us Killers, Jenny Bhatt excavates her characters with incisiveness, nuance, and complexity. The cast of vibrant characters in this wonderful collection is absolutely unique and memorable." ~Karen E. Bender, author of The New Order"This is a gorgeous collection. Bhatt weaves together, with the lightest touch, profound themes--work, ambition, displacement, class, and gender, and so much more. Her plots are beautifully rendered and her scope vast; her characters and her settings come to life on the page. These stories are full of bitter heartbreak with a measure of joy--a wonderful collection from a hugely talented writer." ~Lydia Kiesling, author of The Golden State"Sex, death, redemption, betrayal--this collection has it all, from the sordid to the divine. Bhatt's vivid imagination and well-voiced characters will take you on a ride you won't soon forget." ~Mathangi Subramanian, author of A People's History of Heaven"These stories are filled with wisdom and compassion, bristling with dark occurrences and gleaming with quiet moments of joy: an enriching collection." ~Mahesh Rao, author of Polite Society"Moving, haunting stories that explore a wide range of complex social inequities and yet share an undercurrent of a deep and very human kind of longing." ~Aatif Rashid, author of Portrait of Sebastian Khan"Each of Us Killers offers up a complex portrait of our times. From caste-based violence to domestic power play, from yoga to the under-seam of real-estate development, Bhatt uses a dozen devices to examine the lives of people around us, the choices that define them and, ultimately, our selves." ~Annie Zaidi, author of Unbound, 2000 Years of Indian Women's Writing"Ambitious, sensitive, this collection locates some essential Indian truths, especially its hidden violence." ~Prayaag Akbar, author of Leila

    It tells on an epic scale the story of a tribal patriarch and his family in the mountainous jungles of Orissa. The slow decline in the fortunes of this family- from the quiet prosperity of a subsistence livelihood towards bondage to the local moneylender- is both poignantly individualized as well as symbolic of the erosion of a whole way of life within peasant communities.

    Revisions from the author's notes are included, allowing a deeper view into her world and a better understanding of her work. The Nebula Award–winning short story Love Is the Plan, the Plan Is Death, the Hugo Award–winning novella The Girl Who Was Plugged In, and the Hugo and Nebula Award–winning novella Houston, Houston, Do You Read? are included.The stories of Alice Sheldon, who wrote as James Tiptree Jr. ( Up the Walls of the World ) until her death in 1987, have been heretofore available mostly in out-of-print collections. Thus the 18 accomplished stories here will be welcomed by new readers and old fans. ''The Screwfly Solution'' describes a chilling, elegant answer to the population problem. In ''Love Is the Plan the Plan Is Death,'' the title tells the tale--species survival insured by imprinted drives--but the story's force is in its exquisite, lyrical prose and its suggestion that personal uniqueness is possible even within biological imperatives. ''The Girl Who Was Plugged In'' is a future boy-meets-girl story with a twist unexpected by the players. ''The Women Men Don't See '' displays Tiptree's keen insight and ability to depict singularity within the ordinary. In Hugo and Nebula award-winning ''Houston, Houston, Do You Read?'' astronauts flying by the sun slip forward 500 years and encounter a culture that successfully questions gender roles in ours.ContentsIntroduction by Michael SwanwickThe Last Flight of Doctor Ain (1969)The Screwfly Solution (1977)And I Awoke and Found Me Here on the Cold Hill’s Side (1972)The Girl Who Was Plugged In (1973)The Man Who Walked Home (1972)And I Have Come Upon This Place by Lost Ways (1972)The Women Men Don’t See (1973)Your Faces, O My Sisters! Your Faces Filled of Light! (1976)Houston, Houston, Do You Read? (1976)With Delicate Mad Hands (1981)A Momentary Taste of Being (1975)We Who Stole the Dream (1978)Her Smoke Rose Up Forever (1974)Love Is the Plan the Plan Is Death (1973)On the Last Afternoon (1972)She Waits for All Men Born (1976)Slow Music (1980)And So On, and So On (1971)

    His characters, almost all of who are first-generation Indian Americans, subvert our expectations that they will sit quietly by. We meet two brothers caught in an elaborate web of envy and loathing; a young gay man who becomes involved with an older man whose secret he could never guess; three women who almost gleefully throw off the pleasant agreeability society asks of them; and, in the final pair of linked stories, a young couple struggling against the devastating force of community gossip. If You See Me, Don't Say Hi examines the collisions of old world and new world, small town and big city, traditional beliefs (like arranged marriage) and modern rituals (like Facebook stalking). The men and women in these stories are full of passion, regret, envy, anger, and yearning. They fall in love with the wrong people and betray one another and deal with the accumulation of years of subtle racism. They are utterly compelling. Ranging across the country, Patel’s stories -- empathetic, provocative, twisting, and wryly funny -- introduce a bold new literary voice, one that feels more timely than ever.

    Some are darkly humorous—from two mothers exchanging snide remarks through notes in their kids’ backpacks, to the young girl contemplating how best to notify her Facebook friends of her impending suicide—while others are devastatingly poignant—a new mother and funeral singer who is driven to madness with grief for the young black boys who have fallen victim to gun violence, or the teen who struggles between her upper middle class upbringing and her desire to fully connect with black culture.Thompson-Spires fearlessly shines a light on the simmering tensions and precariousness of black citizenship. Her stories are exquisitely rendered, satirical, and captivating in turn, engaging in the ongoing conversations about race and identity politics, as well as the vulnerability of the black body. Boldly resisting categorization and easy answers, Nafissa Thompson-Spires is an original and necessary voice in contemporary fiction.

    These are some of the inhabitants of People From My Neighborhood. In their lives, details of the local and everyday—the lunch menu at a tiny drinking place called the Love, the color and shape of the roof of the tax office—slip into accounts of duels, prophetic dreams, revolutions, and visitations from ghosts and gods. In twenty-six “palm of the hand” stories—fictions small enough to fit in the palm of one’s hand—Hiromi Kawakami creates a universe ruled by mystery and transformation.

    Follow the career of an actress with Middle-Eastern heritage whose dreams of playing a ghostbuster spiral into repeat castings as a jihadi bride. Among stories of honour killings and ill-fated love in besieged locations, we also find heart-warming connections and powerful challenges to the status quo.From Algiers to Brighton, these stories transcend time and place revealing just how varied the search for belonging can be.Between them the writers in this anthology have been short- or long-listed for four Orange Prizes, two Man Booker Prizes and won countless other awards. Alongside renowned authors are emerging voices published here for the first time.

    In his Introduction, Memon traces the evolution of the Urdu short story from its origins in the work of writers like Munshi Premchand the first professional short story writer in Urdu through the emergence of the Progressives in the late 1930s, whose writings were unabashedly political and underpinned their Marxist ideologies, to the post-Independence Modernist era, and today s generation of avant-garde, experimental writers of Urdu fiction. Every story in the anthology illustrates one or the other facet of the form in the Urdu literary tradition. But even more than for their formal technique and inventiveness, these stories have been included because of their power and impact on the reader. Death and poverty face off in Premchand's masterpiece The Shroud. In Khalida Asghar's The Wagon, a mysterious redness begins to cloak the sunset in a village by the Ravi. Behind closed doors and cracks in the windows lies desire but also a sense of queer foreboding in Naiyer Masud's Obscure Domains of Fear and Desire. The tragedy and horror of Partition are brought to life by Saadat Hasan Manto's lunatic (in Toba Tek Singh ) and the eponymous heroine of Rajinder Singh Bedi's Laajwanti. Despairing, violent, passionate, humorous, ironic and profound the fiction in The Greatest Urdu Stories Ever Told will imprint itself indelibly on your mind. M. U. Memon is a translator without parallel and this book, which brings together the best of short fiction in the literary Urdu tradition, is sure to be classic. This collection spans the entire spectrum of the Urdu literary tradition from Premchand, who is considered the first Urdu short-story writer, to contemporary writers like S. M. Ashraf and Tassaduq Sohail. In The Greatest Urdu Stories Ever Told, you will find much-loved gems like Premchand's Kafan , Rajinder Singh Bedi's Laajwanti , Saadat Hasan Manto's Toba Tek Singh as well as new classics like Sajid Rashid's Fable of a Severed Head and Anwer Khan's The Pose . This book is part of a continuing series that gave us the highly popular The Greatest Bengali Stories Ever Told.

    They bide their time, waiting for an extraordinary event to end their stasis. A politician’s wife imagines her life had her husband’s accident been fatal, a man on death row requests that a friend clear up a misunderstanding with a prostitute, and an elevator attendant feels himself wasting away while trapped, immobile, at his station all day.With curious wit, this collection offers revelatory insight and subtle critique, exploring class, gender, and disenchantment in a changing country.

    The Mahabharata is obsessed with the elusive notion of dharma - in essence, doing the right thing. When a hero falters, the action stops and everyone weighs in with a different and often contradictory take on dharma. The epic's characters are flawed, but their incoherent experiences throw light on our familiar dilemmas. Gurcharan Das's best-selling book India Unbound examined the classical aim of artha, material well being. This, his first book in seven years, dwells on the goal of dharma, moral well being. It addresses the central problem of how to live our lives in an examined way - holding a mirror up to us and forcing us to confront the many ways in which we deceive ourselves and others. What emerges is a doctrine of dharma that we can apply to our business decisions, political strategies and interpersonal relationships - in effect, to life itself.

    South Asia Studies. Mad scientists Hard-boiled detectives Vengeful goddesses Murderous robots Scandalous starlets Drug-fuelled love affairs This anthology features seventeen stories by ten best-selling authors of Tamil crime, romance, science fiction, and detective stories, none of them ever before translated into English, along with reproductions of wacky cover art and question-and-answer sessions with some of the authors. Grab a masala vadai, sit back and enjoy