Small Press Spotlight: Zubaan Books

[stephenhongsohn.livejournal.com]

Small Press Spotlight: Zubaan Books

In my quest to extend the bounds of my Asian American literary knowledge, I am increasingly confronted with the question of the Anglophone archive. I have enjoyed reading Kazuo Ishiguro, Xu Xi, Timothy Mo, Nick Joaquin, and others who are claimed by different national traditions, but yet still possess the “hallowed” Asian descent. India, too, presents an intriguing space here, as Indian writers composing their works in English tend to get slotted into postcolonial studies. Nevertheless, I recall with much fondness an Anglophone subarea exam that included Vikram Seth, Anita Desai, Salman Rushdie, and others. Although I would never again want to experience the stress of having to finish A Suitable Boy for a master’s exam, the Asian Anglophone works are still of great interest to me and often present interesting epistemological questions for the fields of literary studies and for literary taxonomies more broadly.

My reading interests have lead me to Zubaan Books, which is an imprint focused on books written by Indian women. The company’s profile is described as such: Zubaan is an independent non-profit publishing house. It grew out of India's first Feminist publishing house, Kali for Women. Founded by Urvashi Butalia, who was co-founder of Kali for Women, Zubaan was set up to specifically continue Kali's work. Zubaan, has inherited half the backlist of Kali so that reprints of many backlist titles are assured.” I discuss three of the books published by Zubaan in this small press spotlight.



The first book I chose to read was Chandralekha Mehta’s Murder in San Felice, which intrigued me because of its very nourish title. The “murder” that opens the novel is that of a Count, who lives in an unnamed Latin American country; the capital of that country is San Felice. With Mehta’s personal background as the wife to a diplomat, the many characters that pervade the novel include an Ambassador and those seeking passports in and out of the country. Mehta knows exactly what to do with this take on the noir; she adds many characters early on, each of which may or may not be tied to the crime, including: Mona, the daughter of the Ambassador, whose riding shoes are found under the bed of the murdered Count; Pepe, a friend of the Count’s, who apparently turns down the proposal the Count offers him to be his protégé; Sheela, wife of Counsellor Baghwan, who is conducting an affair with an unknown man; Anil, a possible match for the Ambassador’s daughter Mona, and who arrives in San Felice after just completing a detective novel. Mehta’s novel particularly shines because it is a funny one. While grisly plots are occurring, the omniscient narrator knows exactly how to poke fun at the characters as they go about their daily lives. The novel also is around 200 pages and is easily read in one sitting. As with all successful detective-plots, you’re seeking to find out perpetrator, motive, and method. In this way, the novel does not disappoint and I’ll stop here for those who do not want to be spoiled.



The second book, Shadow Men, by Bijoya Sawian, comes with it a mysterious plot description: “A thick mist envelops an isolated house and a cottage atop a hill. Raseel, looking out from the verandah of the house, watches the mist as it covers first the plants, then the trees and finally the house. Suddenly it parts, and three men come into view, furtive, quick. Then they re gone. Minutes later, Raseel hears the sound of shots. Then there is silence.” The “Raseel” in this passage is the title character, who ends up discovering far more about the state of Shillong that she might have at first intended. The opening scene really relays the difficulties in ethnic outsidership that pervade a location like Shillong that is still dominated by a particular group known as the Khasi. Those considered outside the Khasi community face potential exclusion and marginality. The novel possesses an interesting aesthetic technique in that Sawian chooses to often alternate narration between the first person perspective of Raseel and a third person omniscient narrator. The novel is further strange in that many sections seem more like a drama than an actual novel, which pages of dialogue occurring without much narratorial mediation. Sawian’s gift is in making Shillong come alive; we get the sense of the foothills and the intrigue, the political problems and the social quandaries that root many of the residents.



The third book I read, Like a Diamond in the Sky, the debut novel of Shazia Omar, reminds me very much of Mohsin Hamid’s Moth Smoke, in its representation of a dystopic community growing up in an urban environment in South Asia. In this case, the ostensible protagonist, Deen, and his sidekick AJ, are constantly high, constantly looking to get more drugs, and constantly on the make for young, beautiful women. They live in Dhaka, Bangladesh and we see immediately that Omar is presenting us with a novel of disintegration. In published biographies of Omar, we discover that she is a sociologist and we can see this training in her fictional representation. Each character seems to operate as an archetype. Deen himself functions as the prototypical “every man” of this urban youth in Bangladesh, dispirited with the possibility of upward mobility and languishing in ennui. Deen comes from a firmly lower-middle class background, as his father eventually lost his wealth over his lifetime, leaving Deen grasping for opportunities and his mother continually harassing him over his future. His friend AJ has a similarly desultory life and so their connection to each other is not surprising. Many other characters round out the novel including Maria, Deen’s ostensible love interest, who is as unfortunately aimless as he is. Deen and AJ often find themselves under the finger of an organized crime boss known as Raj Gopal; AJ in particular is in love with one of Gopal’s mistresses, a woman called Sundari. The hardscrabble lowest classes are represented in the self-made drug dealer, Falani, who provides for her family despite her perilous situation. Omar’s work is naturalist in its final arc, so we know that the downward spiral of practically all the characters cannot be stopped. A depressing, but politically cognizant work.


Buy the Books Here:

http://www.amazon.com/Murder-San-Felice-Chandralekha-Mehta/dp/8189884859/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1310530190&sr=8-1

http://www.amazon.com/Like-Diamond-Sky-Shazia-Omar/dp/818988414X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1310530210&sr=1-1

http://www.amazon.com/Shadow-Men-Bijoya-Sawian/dp/8189884581/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1310530225&sr=1-1

http://www.zubaanbooks.com/zubaan_books.asp