Hawa Hawa

A collection of inventive and surprising short stories from one of India’s most prominent countercultural writers.
 
In this wildly inventive collection of Nabarun Bhattacharya’s stories, we meet characters such as a trigger-happy cop in an authoritarian police state, a man who holds on to a piece of rope from a deadly noose, a retired revolutionary thrilled by delusions of grandeur, and people working for a corporation that arranges lavish suicides for a price. Ranging from scathing satires of society to surreal investigations of violence and love, these stories are also a window onto the political and social climate in Bengal, tracing both pan-Indian developments like the 1975 Emergency and local ones like militant-leftist Naxalism and the decades-long Communist reign in the state. Expertly translated from the Bengali, Hawa Hawa and Other Stories is a journey through the mind of one of the most daring countercultural writers of India, one with particular resonance in these chaotic times.

‘Each story teeters on the edge of magical realism and surrealism, and the endings leave the reader aroused as if by a peculiar dream. The characters are both charmingly familiar and completely unbelievable: Bhattacharya stretches our imagination to the point of credulity. Noises, stenches, and difficult sights intermingle to create a book that truly lives and breathes. It is a challenge, but a worthwhile one.’—Zadie Magazine, Litro. Read the full review here.

‘Hawa Hawa provides both a window looking back to the past as well as illuminating our present. Bhattacharya’s satire navigates the gaps of time and space to speak to our present time with wisdom. While these stories are rooted in the past, they nevertheless successfully critique modernity.’—Ian Macallen, Chicago Review of Books. Read the full review here.