Orient BlackSwan

About the BookAbout the AuthorTable of ContentsExperts Say

Sabotage is a collection of short stories selected carefully from over one hundred of Anita Agnihotri’s published short fiction. The stories deal with politics of all genres of class, regions, ideologies and human relationships. Together they bring up a vivid image of the country and its people; of the advancing civilization that is embedded in the reality of voiceless submergence. Literary craftsmanship is combined here with a sensitivity of perception that is pan-Indian.

Born and brought up in Kolkata, Anita Agnihotri loves travelling, meeting people and exploring the India wrapped up in silence and torn in conflict. She has authored over 30 books. Though short stories are closest to her heart, she has experimented with all genres of fictions – novels, essays, journals, stories for children and poetry. Forest Interludes, a collection of her journals and short stories, has been selected for international language translation by the Indian Literature Abroad project and has been translated into English and Swedish. Her collection of short stories, “17” won the Economist Crossword Translation Award for 2011.

ABOUT THE TRANSLATOR

Arunava Sinha translates classic, modern and contemporary Bengali fiction and nonfiction into English. Nineteen of his translations have been published so far. Twice the winner of the Crossword translation award, for Sankar''s Chowringhee (2007) and Anita Agnihotri''s Seventeen (2011), respectively, he has also been shortlisted for The Independent Foreign Fiction prize (2009) for his translation of Chowringhee. Besides India, his translations have been published in the UK and the US in English, and in several European and Asian countries through further translation. He was born and grew up in Kolkata, and lives and writes in New Delhi.

Janana Fatak
Sabotage
The Heat Chamber
Submerged
The Nameless
The Infiltrators
The Right to Information or April 7
The Last Samurai
In the Moonlight
The Deceivers
Archaemelancholy and the Water
The Poet’s House

Anita Agnihotri has a keen eye for the injustices, both gross and subtle, perpetrated on the rural poor. She describes the various scenarios of poverty with a clinical eye, without lament and pathos, but in minute, breathless detail. The woman prisoners, the exploited weaver girl, the overworked policeman in a district infested with militants – these and many other characters come to life in their abused humanity. The facts alone are an accusation. This is the protest literature of our age, spoken in a frosty matter-of-fact style which makes the blood curdle.

Martin Kämpchen is a German writer and scholar, based in India