eleutherophobia

Fifteen titles make up the longlist for the 2014 DSC Prize, for literature from or inspired by South Asia. After two mighty recent winners in ‘Chinaman’ and ‘Narcopolis’, this relatively new Prize has set its bar high, and by the looks of this year’s list of contenders, they are more than ready to rise to the challenge. Click image for more

The bus pulled to a halt at the station a few minutes past nine. Port Sudan was dark and humid. I was exhausted from the twelve-hour journey from Khartoum, and now I was in a new world altogether. I needed a shower, but there was no public shower in sight. The air was still, and the palm trees looked like junk-metal statues. Click image for more

As far as we understand, there’s no one who can say he’s been Andre’s boyfriend. We’ve never seen her holding hands. Or a kiss – not even just a light touch on a boy’s skin. It isn’t her style. She doesn’t care about being liked by someone – she seems involved in something else, more complicated. Click image for more

They continued south. Just over the River Barrow they took a wrong turn. They entered wild country. Broken fences. Ruined castles. Stretches of bogland. Wooded headlands. Turfsmoke rose from cabins, thin and mean. On the muddy paths, they glimpsed moving rags. The rags seemed more animated than the bodies within. Click image for more

Roscoe Siskin – the Black Panther, the Pocket Rocket, the future flyweight champion of the world – slid out on a caravan floor on October 29, 1974, in a place you’d never have heard of if it hadn’t been for him. The day he was born, the sky blacked over and the rain did not let up for two whole weeks. The beck burst its banks and flushed the guts out of the shut-up gift shops. Click image for more

So many times Subhash and Udayan had walked across the lowland. It was a shortcut to a field on the outskirts of the neighborhood, where they went to play football. Avoiding puddles, stepping over mats of hyacinth leaves that remained in place. Breathing the dank air. Certain creatures laid eggs that were able to endure the dry season. Others survived by burying themselves in mud, simulating death, waiting for the return of rain. Click image for review

The bride stood like a pillar of salt, rigid under layers of itchy petticoats. Sweat dripped down the hollow of her back and collected in pools under her arms staining the ivory silk. She edged closer to The Bedeken Room door, one ear pressed up against it. She heard the men singing. Their shouts of ‘lai-lai-lai’ rolled down the dusty synagogue corridor. This was it. This was her day. Click image for review

We are on our way to Budapest: Bastard and Chipo and Godknows and Sbho and Stina and me. We are going even though we are not allowed to cross Mzilikazi Road, even though Bastard is supposed to be watching his little sister Fraction, even though mother would kill me dead if she found out; we are just going. Click image for review

Roll out a delicious personal paean to the good, bad and ugly of Soviet cuisine. Add lashings of little-known social history from the crumbling Romanov dynasty to the Putin era’s slavering kleptocrats. Liberally sprinkle with anecdote and a selection of recipes from one of the finest food writers around. Best served hot. Click image for more

Amit Chaudhuri’s ‘Calcutta’ is a rich and engrossing account of the trials and tribulations of a modern Indian city, broaching, from a uniquely informed perspective, every topic from leftist guerrillas to the Indian Premier League. Click image for more.