The View from Here
Stories and Poems of Many Indias
Edited by Githa Hariharan and K. Satchidanandan
“The erudite Kannada scholar and critic D.R. Nagaraj wrote, ‘To read fiction is to know the fate of a society through its metaphors…’ The stories we share in this collection, most through the gift of translation, live through their metaphors; the metaphors the writers and translators hold in their hands like blessings—or timely curses…”
“Can poetry be political? The poems in this anthology tell us without doubt or apprehension: ‘Yes, poetically political if not politically political.’ Politics and poetry, in their real spirit, are two ways of telling the truth, and have been engaged—and continue to engage—in an endless conversation.”
During the seven years of its existence, from 2015 to 2022, the multilingual journal of culture Guftugu resolutely asserted India’s diversity against the attempt to force fit the country into a single mould. Selected from the twenty-two published issues of Guftugu, The View from Here arms us with prose and verse that bear powerful witness to the many Indias, past and present. Twenty stunning stories and more than fifty memorable poems are, together, unflinching in their insistence on diversity, dissent and, most of all, equality.