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In this collection of short stories, strangers waiting at a bus stop take off on a magical journey.  Going home in the rain can mean taking unlikely detours.  A mother and son’s tour through a royal city becomes a journey of rediscovering each other. A lovely young mother crosses into the twilight zone beyond sweetness and light. Food becomes an instrument of torture in ‘Breakfast.’ Everyday situations and people reveal extraordinary facets. These radiant images range from warm and humane to poignant and chilling. They reveal the whimsy and playfulness, the raw edges, the heartbreak, and all things in-between that comprise what it means to be human.

Monideepa Sahu is a former banker who had a wonderful time writing her fantasy adventure novel for young people, Riddle of the Seventh Stone. She has also authored Rabindranath Tagore: The Renaissance Man. Her short fiction has been widely anthologized in India and abroad. She writes opinion pieces and feature stories on literature, art and culture forDeccan Herald and other reputed publications. She lives in Bangalore, India, with her extended family of people, a vintage PC, and countless arthropods. Connect with her at www.monideepa.blogspot.in.

Going Home in The Rain and Other Stories by Monideepa Sahu

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.


TBASS2022

The Best Asian Short Stories 2022 (Editor: Professor Darryl Whetter)

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.

This Will Only Take A Minute: 100 Canadian Flashes (Edited by Bruce Meyer & Michael Mirolla)

This first-of-its-kind anthology showcases an array of the top poets (130 contributors) of this vast Asian region. The book contains the stylistically diverse Chinese poets Lian Yang, Liu Hongbin, Wang Ping and others who share a perspective on their homeland; the oriental touch of the Korean Chung Hee Moon and the Japanese Yosuke Tanaka; Maram al-Masri’s Franco- Syrian metaphors; Sholeh Wolpe’s Iranian-Americanisms, Rosa Jamali’s postcolonial lens on the Middle East; Nese Yasin’s bipolar/ binary Cypriot-Turk registers; politically urgent poetry from the Israeli-Palestinian region by Amir Or, Hava Pinhas-Cohen, Gili Haimovich and others; Paul Hetherington and Cassandra Atherton’s supple art of prose poetry lending a unique Australian colour and diction; the exploration of the rich American and British South Asian diaspora by Moniza Alvi, Vidyan Ravinthiran, Indran Amirthanayagam and Ahilan Packiyanathan; the irony of Kaiser Haq and romanticism of Aminur Rahman from Bangladesh; the magic of the Urdu/Hindustani cadence by India’s Gulzar and Javed Akhtar; Kunwar Narain’s wise philosophical Hindi diction; Adil Jussawalla’s ironic and sparse Mumbai cosmopolitanism and Jayanta Mahapatra deeply-rooted Oriyan metaphors. The signposts are just the tip of the iceberg, acting as a teaser and taste of what you will find inside this volume — in addition to the new/upcoming voices that make the book balanced and truly contemporary. Enjoy the rich and vibrant poetic landscape of Asia.

The Best Asian Poetry 2021-22 (Edited by Sudeep Sen)

The Best Asian Short Stories 2021, the latest in the annual TBASS series of anthologies, presents the Asian short story as a constantly evolving, innovative and vibrant mode of literary expression. Edited by Malachi Edwin Vethamani, Professor Emeritus, Nottingham University, this collection brings together the works of twenty Asian writers and writers residing in Asia, namely from Canada, India, Malaysia, Japan, Singapore, Philippines, United Kingdom and United States of America. The broad theme for this collection is the new normal, revolving around the Covid-19 pandemic, with the inclusion of other stories set in the Asian region. The stories on the new normal theme explore how this world-wide pandemic has impinged on private lives and the public world.

The authors whose stories have been selected for TBASS 2021 include Cyril Wong, Sudeep Sen, Elaine Chew, Danton Remoto, Ivy Ngeow, Bella Negi, Terence Toh, Roy Tristan B. Agustin, Bhaswati Gosh, Kiran Bhat, Christina Yin, Gankhu Sumnyan, Parvathi Nayar, Smita P Mukherjee, Susheela Menon, Andrew Innes, Vicky Chong, Donna Abraham Tijo, Namrata Singh, and Jose Varghese.

TBASS2021

The Best Asian Short Stories 2021

This book will take you along a child’s journey from doodling, to drawing and then consolidating ideas. It will teach you how to plan possibilities in writing. This book is not only to entertain the readers but also to inspire young writers to chase their dreams without fear.

Rishav is 8 years old and he is in Grade 3. He lives in Singapore.

Dreamagination by Rishav Gupta

Horizon Afar is a collection of Tamil short stories written by Jayanthi Sankar and translator into English by P. Muralidharan.

This collection of short stories traverse beyond the contemporary life of Singapore on a quest to answer the eternal question, “What made life on this earth mechanical and devoid of meaning?” Presented here is a peek into the other side of modern life, opening new windows to the life and culture of various ethnicities of South East Asia.

Jayanthi Sankar is popular in the mainland just as amongst the writers of the diaspora. Her presence is totally absent in the stories themselves. The human side of Singapore, its students, the life of migrant workers and their aspirations to acquire resident status, interracial origins, lives of sex workers, cohabiting youth and many more such lucid narrations motivated me to translate them for English readers. The short story, “A Few Pages from Yuka Wong’s Diary”, on century-old cultural and political issues of China and Japan, is a unique work by any author of Indian origin.

Jayanthi Sankar has been creatively active for the past twenty-one years in short stories, novels, translation, transcreations and essays. Several of her books have been awarded by renowned organisations. Born and brought up in India, she has lived in Singapore since 1990. After Loss and Laws, Horizon Afar is the second collection of her Tamil short stories that have been translated into English.

Horizon Afar and Other Tamil Short Stories by Jayanthi Sankar

Zafar Anjum’s Kafka in Ayodhya is the storyteller’s storybook. And what better guide than the famous existentialist to take you by the hand? The sojourner will discover the complex-bizarre in the conversations, the places, the atmosphere, the routine, and above all, the people. These are Kafkaesque characters flung into occasions where an absurdist sensibility seems opportune and knocking. You’ll encounter the archetypes, the questing, and the transformations. ‘Stories are found things,’ says one story, its wisdom line echoing through this splendid suite of story gems. The reader will relish the excavation of each tale’s sublime moments — these moments awaiting an unearthing, ‘like fossils in the ground’.

Zafar Anjum is a Singapore-based journalist, writer and entrepreneur. He has authored Kafka in Ayodhya and Other Short Stories (Kitaab, 2015), Startup Capitals : Discovering the Global Hotspots of Innovation (Random House India, December 2014), Iqbal: The Life of a Poet, Philosopher and Politician (Vintage Books/Random House India, 2014), The Resurgence of Satyam (Random House India, 2012), and The Singapore Decalogue: Episodes in the Life of a Foreign Talent (Red Wheelbarrow Books, 2012).

Kafka in Ayodhya by Zafar Anjum

Set in contemporary Singapore, 'Lockie and Lakshmi' is a children's book. The story is about two fun-loving, vivacious six-year old girls coming from two culturally different backgrounds. They love the things that most little girls like, school, friends, dressing up, fitting in and last but not least beautiful hair!

Lakshmi has never seen anything like it before....... Lockie’s wormy hair! She is mesmerised as Lockie shows up to school with long dreadlocks all dolled up. Lockie on the other hand, does not like all of the attention that her hair is drawing. Their moms step in and tell the girls that enough is enough. Can they help Lakshmi and Lockie realise what is really important?

Both Kelley Benjamin¬ Bonimy teaches at an international school in Singapore. Dr. Sheela Warrier is a Reseach Associate in Singapore.


Lockie and Lakshmi by Kelley Benjamin¬ Bonimy and Dr. Sheela Warrier

…In a moment of Naivety,

it seeks release from the grips of fatigue

lest it remains elusive, lost in a lament

of miscellaneous things.

Between sips of Masala Chai is a foray into a homemaker’s aromatic and often chaotic journey to catch a glimpse of herself while she navigates through the assorted roles.

The routine of sitting down with a cup of maslala chai is a gateway to the poet’s inner world and is a welcome interlude during the daily hum of activities. In the flux of domesticity, relationships, travel, nostalgia and loss, the poems interact converge and spill over one another with subtle irony and tenderness and emerge in an unexpected confluence similar to flavours brimming in her cup of masala chai.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Shilpa Dikshit Thapliyal is a former computer professional turned home-maker turned writer who often refers to herself as the ‘accidental poet’. Amidst the endless grocery runs, school volunteering and chapatti making, she manages to squeeze in a verse or two. Her poems have been published in journals and anthologies in Singapore, India and the USA. She has self published her debut collection of poems titled 'Chimes of the Soul' (Singapore,2015). Shilpa resides in Singapore with her family. 

 

Between Sips of Masala Chai by Shilpa Dikshit Thapliyal

All the Shades of Truth, written during the pandemic, uses a new poetic lingua franca to delve into fatigue and isolation. The poet uses metaphors like Fibonacci Retracements and Tulipomania to put a lens on the twins of fear and greed that just do not seem to go away. Daswani’s poetry covers important world socio-political events: Never Forget is a paean to the heroes of 9/11 and Juneteenth an anthem for the emancipation of the enslaved. He uses haikus to write about Deepavali and his modern take on the Hindu marriage ritual Saptapadi is a first. His poems also reinterpret Greek myths and the great Indian epics.

All the Shades of Truth suggests that truth lies within interstitial greyness and is the sum of all perceptions. For the poet these perceptions are informed by a multi-sensory exploration of the opposites around him and the ever-present hope that lies at the frontier of despair.

Neil Daswani is a Singaporean author with an international background. He is a banker by day and a poet by night who now writes poetry prolifically and often in tandem with artists. 

All The Shades of Truth by Neil Daswani

The poems in this book were written over three decades and needed to be shared, before they moved away into redshift. Many of these poems are about love, both lost and found. This eclectic volume has something for every reader: verses about the balm and beauty of nature, high school physics, humour and occasionally the surreal. More recent poems explore the emptiness around Covid-19 or grieving and the hope that lies beyond. 

Neil Daswani is a Singaporean author with an international background. He is a banker by day and a poet by night who now writes poetry prolifically and often in tandem with artists. 

Redshift by Neil Daswani 