| |
Ahmad Saidullah is a storyteller with an engaging and original voice and a surfeit of talent.’ —Bapsi Sidhwa, author of Ice-Candy-Man and Water.
‘Not only is Ahmad Saidullah’s imagination unique, but his singular voice stands out from the myriad forms of expression in modern writing and deserves to be heard.’ —Deepa Mehta, Director of the Academy Award-Nominated Film Water
‘Sometimes, writing is irresistible …’ confesses the ‘keeper of secrets’, the pompous, erudite, and at times wickedly funny fictional editor of this collection of stories. In his Editor’s Note, he tells us of a mysterious box of manuscripts, almost impossible to open, whose contents reconstruct the lives of several characters from a small town in north India that was torn apart by religious violence. This collection, he informs us tantalizingly, is compiled from what he could hurriedly salvage from the box before it shut, never to open again.
An unnamed man flees for Bombay after assassinating a politician during a religious riot in western India in ‘Flight to Egypt’. In ‘Fifteen Sketches of Rumi’, a young woman comes to comes to terms with the possibility that something within her has been irreparably mutilated by her family’s brutal response to her love affair. And the title story, ‘Happiness and Other Disorders’, is a uniquely styled comic account of the editor’s back problems.
Beautifully crafted and remarkably layered, Happiness and other Disorders offers portraits of characters and societies torn apart by violence and oppression. Ahmad Saidullah displays a brilliant command over a complex range of narrative styles in this highly original debut collection.
ISBN - 9780143064206
|
| |
Pages : 256
|