08Aug/17
Close reading of Diana Evans’s 26a by Tessa Roynon
‘My first book is about the loss of a twin, what happens beyond that loss’, says Diana Evans in a 2018 BBC radio interview.
07Aug/17
Close reading of Nadeem Aslam’s The Wasted Vigil by C. S. Bhagya
The heart of Nadeem Aslam’s third novel, The Wasted Vigil (2008), echoes John Berger’s often quoted claim (excerpted from his Booker-winning novel G.): ‘Never again will a single story be told as though it’s the only one’.
07Aug/17
‘Caleb Femi in performance’ by Justine McConnell
Caleb Femi’s work compels his audience to move away from a modern dependence on the written word…
06Aug/17
Close reading of Hari Kunzru’s The Impressionist by Khadeeja Khalid
Hari Kunzru’s The Impressionist follows the experiences of the chameleon-like protagonist, Pran Nath…
06Aug/17
Close reading of V. S. Naipaul’s A House for Mr Biswas by William Ghosh
A House for Mr Biswas has been canonized, as Harish Trivedi says, ‘as one of the greatest postcolonial novels in English’. […]
05Aug/17
Close reading of Moniza Alvi’s ‘Eine Kleine Nachtmusik’ by William Ghosh
Alvi’s poem, ‘Eine Kleine Nachtmusik’ (‘a little night music’) shares its title with a Mozart serenade (No. 13 for Strings in G Major) and a Stephen Sondheim musical. But its direct point of reference is a 1943 painting, ‘Eine Kleine Nachtmusik’, by the American surrealist Dorothea Tanning. […]
04Aug/17
Close reading of Vahni Capildeo’s ‘Fire & Darkness: And Also / No Join / Like’ by Chelsea Haith
On the selection of this text for Best Collection, Chair of the 2016 Forward Prize panel Malika Booker noted that Vahni Capildeo’s Measures of Expatriation (2016) captures what it is to inhabit liminal spaces. […]
03Aug/17
Close reading of Caryl Phillips’s Foreigners by William Ghosh
Caryl Phillips’s Foreigners is structured in three distinct sections. It tells the stories of three black men living in England at different points in the country’s history. […]
02Aug/17
‘Reading “Bass Culture”: Linton Kwesi Johnson’s politics of Rhythm and Bass’ by Louisa Layne
Upon receiving the Golden PEN Award in 2012, Linton Kwesi Johnson emphasized in his acceptance speech that he saw himself as a child of the Caribbean Artist Movement (CAM)…
02Aug/17
Close reading of Daljit Nagra’s ‘For the Wealth of India’ by Khadeeja Khalid
Daljit Nagra’s ‘For the Wealth of India’ maps the experience of a British Indian woman who returns to her ‘ancestral homeland’ (l. 4) to buy her wedding dress.