Reviews & Musings

  Namrata explores Kabul through Taran N Khan’s Shadow City which according to her isn’t just about a city . Stories in Kabul begin with the phrase ‘ Yeki bood, yeki na bood .’ There was one, there was no one. Taran N Khan (Shadow City) Taran N Khan’s first book, Shadow City takes us around Kabul highlighting the varied experiences the city and its people have been through over years. It is neither a memoir, nor a travelogue. Lying somewhere in between, Khan has found the perfect voice to depict a place which has been through so much and yet continues to thrive in various ways. Growing up in Aligarh, Khan grew up with a fascination for Afghanistan due to her Pashtun background. After completing her education in Delhi and London, she has now decided to call Mumbai her home for the time being. Her works have been widely published in India and internationally, including in Guernica, Al Jazeera, the  Caravan  and  Himal Southasian . Her writing has also received support from the MacDowell

  Book Review by Namrata Name: The Merman and the Book of Power- A Qissa Author: Musharraf Ali Farooqi Publisher: Aleph Book Company, 2019 The Merman and the Book of Power  is the retelling of a  qissa , a classic storytelling form in Urdu. This epic novel combines myth with history to give us a glimpse of the evolution of civilisation. Author Musharraf Ali Farooqi works have been critically acclaimed and have been a finalist for both, Man Asia Literary Prize 2012 and DSC Prize for South Asian Literature 2008 apart from being longlisted for IMPAC/Dublin Literary Prize. Along with being a writer, he is also an editor, translator and founder of the Storykit Program. As Farooqi says in the Author’s Note,  “This book merges the parallel histories, myths and multiple personas for Apollonius of Tyana, Hermes Trismegistus and Alexander the Great in the Western and Eastern literary canon, and the various religious, occult and apocalyptic traditions associated with them.” Deeply reminiscent of