KITAAB

Singapore-based independent publishing company Kitaab launched two of its latest titles at the Singapore Writers Festival on Saturday, 7 November 2015.

The newly released titles were ‘Loss and Laws and Other Tamil Short Stories’ by Jayanthi Sankar & Usha Nagasamy (translator) and ‘Kafka in Ayodhya and Other Short Stories’ by Zafar Anjum.

The titles were unveiled by renowned Singaporean writers Suchen Christine Lim and Isa Kamari. Appreciating Kitaab’s efforts at translation, Suchen said that Kitaab was doing a great job of connecting Asian writers worldwide. She is on the advisory board of Kitaab.

Anjum, who is also the publisher and editor-in-chief of Kitaab, has dedicated his book to “the wounded ‘Idea of India’”.

“My dedication is in solidarity with the writers, filmmakers and intellectuals of India who are protesting against the rising tide of intolerance in India,” Anjum said. “I was recently traveling in India, and across cities, I found people disturbed over elements that threatened the harmony of the country. The good news is that people of India are fighting back such elements and they will not allow the secular character of the country to be changed.”

Anjum is the author of many best-sellers such as The Resurgence of Satyam, Iqbal: The Life of a Poet, Philosopher and Politician, and more recently, Startup Capitals: Discovering the Global Hotspots of Innovation. His earlier collection of short stories, The Singapore Decalogue, was supported by the National Arts Council of Singapore with an Arts Creation Fund grant.

‘In the title story, Kafka in Ayodhya, the legendary German language writer who was born in Prague, travels to Ayodhya at a time when the country was tense and waited for the Supreme Court Judgement on the Babri Masjid-Ramjanambhoomi dispute with bated breath,” Anjum said. “It is a surreal story with a comic touch but it has a serious message of peace in it. The collection has eight stories, some real and some surreal, set in either India or Singapore.”

Sankar, who is a journalist on a local Tamil paper in Singapore, said that ‘Loss and Laws and other Tamil Short Stories’ is based on the observations and experiences of the author’s 26 years of life spent in fast-changing Singapore. The author has been writing for 20 years. There are 17 short stories in this collection–all chosen from the 99 short stories written by the author over a period of 17 years. The title story, Loss and Laws, is based on the experience of a domestic worker from India who comes to Singapore, and unknowingly, becomes the victim of the strict laws of Singapore. Sankar also said that one of the stories in collection, titled ‘The Teahouse’, is based on the experiences of a Chinese old man in Yishun who would share tales with the author.

Usha Nagasamy, a Further Education college lecturer who lives in London, could not attend the launch.