Out of Print 5

Out of Print has been around for a full year, which we think is quite phenomenal.

We feature work by one of India’s foremost literary figures, Kannada author U R Ananthamurthy. Apoorva, translated by Deepa Ganesh, explores an encounter between strangers, each of whom is in a marriage in which one partner contemplates death as the singular solution to a dying relationship. Our second translated work, The Cow by Pakistani writer Firdaus Haider allegorically examines the female condition. The translation is by Nighat Gandhi whose own writing appeared in our first issue. Three other stories, Annie Zaidi’s, Sujata,  Sharanya Mannivanan’s The High Priestess Never Marries and Roshna Kapadia’s Eyes Like Yours, expose the complex and sometimes brutal layers of character and society that influence human interaction.  

Work by Chandrahas Choudhury and Murzban Shroff complete this collection. Shroff’s Mind over Matter, written in a light-hearted tone, is a scathing commentary on individual and systemic corruption. And aspects of the wonderful Dnyaneshwar Kulkarni Changes His Name by Choudhury resonate with this issue’s cover art from Jan Banning’s Bureaucratics series.