Kitaab T.V: Dr. Varsha Panjwani (A Shakespeare Scholar) reads from Quarantined Sonnets
Shakespeare scholar, Dr. Varsha Panjwani (London) reads from Tabish Khair’s Quarantined Sonnets: Sex, Money and Shakespeare.
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Tag Archives: Tabish Khair
Kitaab contributes to Singapore Charity to support migrant workers
Kitaab Singapore is delighted to announce that it has contributed a sum of SGD 200 (over INR 10,000) from the e-publication of Tabish Khair’s QUARANTINED SONNETS: Sex, Shakespeare and Money to a Singaporean Charity, Migrant Workers’ Centre, towards the Migrant Workers’ Assistance Fund.
The ebook was published to raise money for migrant workers. We thank all our readers and supporters for buying e-copies of the book.
HLF session with Tabish Khair in conversation with A Giridhar Rao
Published by Kitaab, Quarantined Sonnets: Sex, money and Shakespeare by Tabish Khair is considered to be one of the finest works of literature to come out of the Covid 19 pandemic. This anthology of sonnets written by the noted poet, novelist and critic, contains powerfully original rewritings which combine humor and satire with acute social and political commentary.
Read moreDr Eleine Ng reads from Tabish Khair’s Quarantined Sonnets: Sex, Money and Shakespeare
Shakespeare scholar, Dr Eleine Ng (Singapore) reads from Tabish Khair’s Quarantined Sonnets: Sex, Money and Shakespeare.
In powerfully original rewritings that combine humour and satire with acute social and political commentary, Tabish Khair uses William Shakespeare’s sonnets to paint a memorable and moving picture of the world in corona quarantine. This is arguably the first major work of literature to come out of the corona crisis. With iconoclastic humour and intelligence, it runs the readers through a gamut of emotions. It is also a clarion call for change. These 21 sonnets range from initial humorous riffs on the foibles of our age but grow progressively darker and more acerbic, while always playing with Shakespeare’s original works. A must-read for our times!
Profits from this e-book are being donated by the publisher and author to Migrant Workers Centre, Singapore, helping migrant workers to cope with the current economic crisis complicated by the Novel Coronavirus pandemic.
The Kindle edition of the ebook is available at https://tinyurl.com/quarantined-sonnets
Quarantined Times of Hope and Despair – Readings by Shabana Azmi
Noted actress Shabana Azmi, reads a short-story ‘River of No Return‘ written by Tabish Khair.
In words of the author,
Read more“The story she reads out here is a story of violence and despair, but the fact that she found the time to make this brilliant recording is also illustrative of the other side of our human crisis: we are not just prisoners in the cells of our devastation. Not during the pandemic, and not afterward. There are ways to connect. There are ways to organize. There are ways to hope.“
Kitaab publishes the first major work of literature to come out of the corona crisis
Kitaab has published Tabish Khair’s anthology, Quarantined Sonnets: Sex, Money and Shakespeare, in support of Singapore’s Migrant Workers
In this ebook, in powerfully original rewritings that combine humour and satire with acute social and political commentary, Tabish Khair uses William Shakespeare’s sonnets to paint a memorable and moving picture of the world in corona quarantine. This is arguably the first major work of literature to come out of the corona crisis. With iconoclastic humour and intelligence, it runs the readers through a gamut of emotions. It is also a clarion call for change. These 21 sonnets range from initial humorous riffs on the foibles of our age but grow progressively darker and more acerbic, while always playing with Shakespeare’s original works. A must-read for our times!
Profits from this e-book are being donated by the publisher and author to Migrant Workers Centre, Singapore, helping migrant workers to cope with the current economic crisis complicated by the Novel Coronavirus pandemic. Read more
Celebrating 15 Years of Kitaab: A message from Kitaab’s Founding Editor, Zafar Anjum
The year 2020 is here and if you are reading this message, we thank you for being with us and wish you a very Happy New Year!
This year has a special significance for Kitaab: we celebrate our 15th anniversary. That’s a relatively long time in the life of a webzine in this day and age of short attention spans, isn’t it?
Well, we are not patting ourselves on the back but please allow us to take us down the memory lane for a while to appreciate why we feel how we feel at this juncture of time.
On writing women
By Bina Shah
In researching my previous column on the work of Elena Ferrante, I read how certain critics were convinced that the author was actually a man writing under a woman’s pseudonym because she wrote assertively and confidently about the domains of men, especially politics, crime, and violence. In return, Ferrante’s supporters asserted that not only could a woman write well about these domains, but that “only a woman” could know of the secret interior worlds of women and write about them as truthfully and authentically as Ferrante.
Is it possible for a male writer to do the reverse, and describe the life and mind of a female character as well as women writers must do when writing about men? A consensus has emerged amongst women readers and feminist critics of literature that many male writers have not felt obligated to create female characters who are as complex, well-rounded, and three-dimensional as the men. Read more
Source: Dawn
‘Why literature festivals, as a writer, fill me with utmost dread’:Tabish Khair
By Tabish Khair
The fun literary festival season has commenced in India. It will hit its peak in January, when I too am scheduled to appear at the legendary Jaipur Literature Festival, and the upcoming and exciting KALAM in Kolkata. As always, I am honoured to be asked, and totally torn in two by such invitations.
There is no doubt that literary festivals do much good: they bring writers in contact with readers, they enable readers to buy a book or two along with the pau-bhaji or burger that they usually buy during outings, and they focus publicity on some lucky books.
So why is it that I have mixed feelings about doing literary festivals and similar public appearances?
I will try to explain. Being born in middle class circles where one has to earn a salary, I have perforce skirted around full-time writing. Writing is a vocation for me, but in order to write, I have had to hew out careers — first as a journalist in India and then an academic in Denmark.
The vocation of writing demands total commitment — something that my careers do not permit. But they come with their advantages too, apart from the necessary salary. Journalism trained me to write accessibly and keep a deadline. It enabled me to meet the sort of people — criminals, politicians, bigots — who were not part of my circles. Academia allowed me to read widely, and in some depth. Both fed into my vocation as a writer. Read more
Source: DailyO
Tabish Khair joins Kitaab’s Editorial Advisory Board
Well-known poet, novelist and critic Dr. Tabish Khair has joined the editorial advisory board of Singapore-based literary website, Kitaab.
As a member of the board, Dr. Khair joins the ranks of some of Asia’s illustrious writers and editors such as Dr. Amitava Kumar, Kunal Basu and Anees Salim.
Born and educated in a small town of Bihar, India, Dr. Khair is the author of various books, including the poetry collections, Where Parallel Lines Meet (Penguin, 2000) and Man of Glass (HarperCollins, 2010), the studies, Babu Fictions: Alienation in Indian English Novels (Oxford UP, 2001) and The Gothic, Postcolonialism and Otherness (Palgrave, 2010) and the novels, The Bus Stopped (Picador, 2004), Filming (Picador, 2007), The Thing About Thugs (Harpercollins, 2010; Houghton Mifflin, 2012) and How to Fight Islamist Terror from the Missionary Position (Interlink and Corsair 2014).
His honours and prizes include the All India Poetry Prize (awarded by the Poetry Society and the British Council) and honorary fellowship (for creative writing) of the Baptist University of Hong Kong. His novels have been shortlisted for nine prestigious prizes in five countries, including the Man Asian Literary Prize and the Encore Award, and translated into several languages. Read more
