Travelling across India, the 7 stories in this enthralling debut collection shine a loving light on questions of personal responsibility and mortality. In His Shoes Fit Snug a woman confronts the possibility of her Sherpa son’s death when there is an avalanche at Everest base camp. Danger lurks when three brothers go for a swim to the river on the last day of their summer holidays in Afternoon in Malabar. Each story reflects her signature qualities as a writer—strong plot, subdued menace, and characters that undergo deep psychological shifts.
FOREWORD BY KEN MORAFF: The stories in this collection are filled with people we’d like to know. The pages teem with honestly drawn, beautifully fallible characters with dreams and sorrows, people who have so much to tell us. The protagonists are not angels: we watch them fight and grieve; we see them struggle to understand love. They deceive each other, they betray the ones who least deserve it. Yet sometimes they act with incredible kindness. Sometimes they are filled with love. They feel remorse, and our hearts break with theirs as they slowly comprehend their mistakes. We read these tales and are plunged into the human world. When I first came across Pooja Nair’s work, I knew I had stepped into a miraculous universe. Somehow, in a few short pages, we are treated not only to fascinating characters, not only a captivating plot, but a wealth of meaning and emotion that springs up without warning behind the scenes. The author is a master of subtlety, of the meaningful glance, the intriguing hint. Insights are hidden in dim corners. Implications ripple from..
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Pooja Nair grew up in Pune, India. She worked for a major media corporation in an earlier life and has lived in New York, London, Paris, Boston and Los Angeles but her stories are mostly influenced by her early years in India. She divides her time between Portland Oregon and Palakkad Kerala, or wherever she is allowed to pitch her all weather tent