Six new Indian titles that blur the line between our

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A Kind of Meat and Other Stories, Catherine Thankamma

The stories in this collection have a shared theme: innocent children and audacious women – wives, mothers, daughters, widows – carrying the burden of living in a conservative and hypercritical country.

In the eponymous story, young Saira inadvertently admits to eating beef during Christmas celebrations – what follows is a storm of judgment and fear when the landlord comes knocking at the door. In “The Road Home”, after the death of her husband, Theresa feels devastated when her own sons betray her trust, forcing her to confront the painful truth that love can often be traumatic. In “Madhu”, a middle-class woman’s hostility gives way to compassion as she gets to know the colony’s garbage collector. In “Tara”, a mother sheds her inhibitions and helps her young daughter overcome a learning disability. In “Pieta”, the lens shifts to Mother Mary – the story probes the weight of love and grief that only a mother can know when her child is victimised and put to death. In each of the stories, the characters undergo a quiet transformation as they subtly sidestep the demarcated boundaries that society has imposed upon them and forge new identities propelled by love, loss, and longing.

The Lion’s Tale, Akhil K, translated from the Malayalam by Saritha Ravindranath

Rajan, the hooch distiller, needs a couple of ghosts to scare off anyone coming up the mountain towards Ettunaad. Who better than the penniless Aadi and Saravanan, sons of Ettunaad’s legendary Theyyam artist Chindachchan? When Rajan’s plan works better than he could have imagined, Aadi comes up with a new, far more sinister one.

Over the next few month’s locals begin to mysteriously turn up dead one after the other. Meanwhile, Inspector George Alex and Sub-Inspector Anand make their way to Ettunaad following a double murder in a high-security army facility called Area 11. Is the spate of local murders related to these too?

The Pretenders, Avtar Singh

In a posh Delhi colony, Shamsher Singh looks on as a man carries around a corpse looking to give his friend a decent burial. His is a privileged life, and yet, the Covid-19 pandemic has ripped open all the insecurities and anxieties of his past. In locked-down Beijing, Mei must come to terms with both her stepfather’s demands and her budding relationship with Farid, Shamsher Singh’s neighbour. In Bangkok, Changez Khan finds an unexpected kindness, but he has his own ghosts to suffer. And in Jakarta, Nina, Mei’s mother, must overcome both her husband’s insufferable isolation and her daughter’s loneliness. As the body count continues to mount and death steps ever closer, lies are exposed, and deceptions unravelled. But there is always hope.

Set across Asia at the peak of the brutal Delta wave, The Pretenders is a novel about finding love, freedom and human connection even in the bleakest of times. Policemen, predators, the privileged and the under-privileged – everyone must confront their demons to discover what it is they are pretending about.

The Last Free Naga: Stories, Jim Wungramyao Kasom

Comprising twelve stories, The Last Free Naga paints a portrait of a people, the remoteness of whose land is both a defence and a chosen way of life.

The stories range from those that describe the time when the Naga national movement was at its peak, to stories about the rhythms of rural life, and about the extraordinary beauty and ruthlessness of the land. In the title story, a young boy meditates on all that he will leave behind in his village once he goes to study in the relative safety of a neighbouring state – how will he carry the mementoes of his land and his people in a single suitcase? In “Salt”, a man confronts head-on the brutality of the state, even though all he wants is to carve a life for himself in the quiet mountains. In “Season of Cicadas”, a walk home is interrupted by the Khangayei, a creature of myth and memory, often misunderstood. And “The River that Bends Time” takes the reader into a mystical landscape where the forgotten past comes alive – where fishing nets bind generations of fathers and sons, and a river continues to flow despite all the changes in the land that it waters. Silent lovers, fractured families, taciturn fathers, feisty grandmothers, lost uncles – Jim Kasom’s stories contain a multitude of lives, each as fascinating as it is unforgettable.

Flight of the Munal Nepali Stories from Darjeeling, Chimi Lama, translated by Yoshay Lama Lindblom

In these intimate portraits of women – women under duress, women falling in love, women reminiscing of girlhood, women coming into being against the onerous world intent on holding them down, women just trying to survive one more day – Chimi Lama presents a fierce collection of short stories from the foothills of the Himalayas, before the digital world of internet and mobile phones became a mainstay in life.

From the idiosyncratic charm of Lhamu Aji’s escapades to Nirmala’s quiet resilience in the world of sex work, from Parvati’s fatalistic acclimatisation to Maichyang’s fortitude battling the elements, this
volume explores the unplumbed lives of Indian–Nepalese women navigating the treacherous terrain of domestic violence, racial tensions, and cultural erasure – all while carrying the weight of family honour and community expectations on their shoulders.

Vaadivaasal, CS Chellappa, translated from the Tamil by Kalyan Raman

Vaadivaasal, a novella published in 1949, is considered a modern literary classic in Tamil. It describes the events of an afternoon in Periyapatti, a village in southern Tamil Nadu, where a jallikattu contest, involving the traditional sport of bull taming, is underway. The novella opens with the arrival of bulls in the village from near and far, excitement and anticipation from the crowd of onlookers and tales of past heroics being exchanged among the villagers.

Through the afternoon, Picchi, a young man from distant Usilanoor, displays his prowess at bull-taming, triumphing against several bulls. The highlight of the day is his encounter with the Kari bull, the prize animal fielded by the Periyapatti zamindar, which he defeats in a show of great ingenuity and courage.

It is gradually revealed that the Kari bull had killed Picchi’s father, a legendary bull-tamer, in a jallikattu held many years ago. Picchi had come to Periyapatti with the express intention of avenging his father’s death. Vaadivaasal is a masterful account not only of a traditional sport and the people who engaged in it, but also of the relations of power and how they played out in a bygone era.