New releases from Kitaab
3 min read
Kitaab announces the release of 4 new titles
The Best Asian Short Stories 2022 – Editor: Darryl Whetter; Series Editor: Zafar Anjum
Like any proper anthology of short fiction, Asian or not, this one is a celebration of, indeed a valentine to, the short story. One way we know we have read a great short story, as you will here again and again, is the recurrent, delicious mistake of feeling like we have actually just read an entire novel. Short stories are dense and compact; novels are, by definition, loose and baggy. To read a short story in one sitting, as we are so tempted to do here, is to have the artistic equivalent of expanding a compressed computer file: so much life comes pouring out, jack-in-the-box or clown-car style, of these meticulously crafted sentences and scenes. These brave, talented, unforgetable writers from the Philippines, Afghanistan, India, Japan and Singapore have compressed so much life, so much hard-fought wisdom, battered grace, and sweet delight, into these seventeen moving stories in alluring voices.
This Will Only Take A Minute: 100 Canadian Flashes (Edited by Bruce Meyer & Michael Mirolla)
Brevity is the soul of wit, as William Shakespeare wrote in one of his longer plays, Hamlet. Flash Fiction, brief stories, have become one of the most exciting sub-genres of contemporary fiction. In This Will Only Take a Minute: Canadian Flash Fiction, Guernica Editions features short short stories by Canadian writers from six words to 500 words in length, short stories from across the entire spectrum of Canadian writing. and anything from stark realism to speculative fiction.
Kitaab is distributing this title in Singapore as a cultural exchange arrangement with the Canadian publisher, Guernica Editions.
An Angel in Pyjamas by Tabish Khair
Written in the early 1990s and published in 1996, Tabish Khair’s first novel strangely evokes the India and the world of the 2010s: rape in a public bus in Delhi, hyperventilating media, war against terror, an aggressive ‘Hindu’ right, intolerant Islamism, growing social differences, etc. But along with all that, it remains a novel teeming with life, angels, dead poets, humour, history, memorable characters, and the joyous sadness of our world that Khair always captures so well and ironically in his fiction.
Twelve from a Taluk Town: Selected Short Stories by Kalam Haidri (Translated by Syed Sarwar Hussain)
Born in the ancient city of Munger, in the state of Bihar, Kalamul Haq, better known by his pen name, Kalam Haidri, was an Urdu short story writer, journalist, and literary critic, and is widely regarded as one of the important literary figures of twentieth century Urdu literature. One of the most out-spoken writers of his time, Haidri started his career as a journalist but soon accompanied his journalism withcreative writing. He was deeply influenced by socialist ideologies, and wrote extensively against the politics of sectarianism and religion. A full translation of his selected works into English has been long overdue. We hope that this anthology will fill that gap, affording further inspiration to young writers.
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