She asked her parents to buy him the books she’d been read by her first teachers, Peter Rabbit and Frog and Toad. What’s the point of buying books for someone who can’t read? her parents asked, legiti...
Sang had got down on all fours and crawled into Farouk’s coat closet, weeping uncontrollably, at one point hitting herself with a shoe. She’d refused to emerge from the closet until the policeman lift...
Relax, Edith says. The perfect name will come to you in time. Which is when Gogol announces, There’s no such thing. No such thing as what? Astrid says. There’s no such thing as a perfect name. I think...
Pet names are a persistent remnant of childhood, a reminder that life is not always so serious, so formal, so complicated.
My wife's name was Mala. The marriage had been arranged by my older brother and his wife. I regarded the proposition with neither objection nor enthusiasm. It was a duty expected of me, as it was expe...
Most of all I remember the three of them operating during that time as if they were a single person, sharing a single meal, a single body, a single silence, and a single fear.
Kaushik, what about a picture? my father suggested. I shook my head. I had left my camera, my father’s old Yashica, at school. But you always have it with you. That look of irritated disappointment, t...
He waited for chaotic games to end, for shouts to subside. His favorite moments were when he was alone, or felt alone. Lying in bed in the morning, watching sunlight flickering like a restless bird on...
He felt the chill of her secrecy, numbing him, like a poison spreading quickly through his veins.
Havia a ansiedade de que uum dia não se sucedesse ao outro, junto com a certeza de que certamente se sucederia. Era como prender a respiração, como Udayan tentara fazer na baixada. E, no entanto, de a...
Gogol is unaccustomed to this sort of talk at mealtimes, to the indulgent ritual of the lingering meal, and the pleasant aftermath of bottles and crumbs and empty glasses that clutter the table.
Do I remind you of that night? Not at all, his father says eventually, one hand going to his ribs, a habitual gesture that has baffled Gogol until now. You remind me of everything that followed.
I love reading poetry, and yet, at this point, the thought of writing a poem, to me, is tantamount to figuring out a trigonometry question.
[T]hey are trying to find the right word, to choose, finally, the one that is most exact, most incisive. It's a process of sifting, which is exhausting and, at times, exasperating. Writers can't avoid...
When you live in a country where your own language is considered foreign, you can feel a continuous sense of estrangement. You
Things were different now, of course; those solitary hours he'd once savored had become a prison for him, a commonplace.
The effort flops like a just-caught fish inside her. A brief burst of possibility as the name is typed onto the screen, as she clicks to activate the search. Hope thrashing in the process of turning c...
That's the thing about books. They let you travel without moving your feet.
That night when I went to the bathroom I only pretended to brush my teeth, for I feared that I would somehow rinse the prayer out as well. I wet the brush and rearranged the tube of paste to prevent m...
She had denied herself the pleasure of openly sharing life with the person she loved.