Parisians and post- realists

The Harpercollins book of Urdu stories (Rs 295) edited by Muhammad Umar Memon is an excellent collection of beautifully done translations, but strangely lacking in the most rudimentary editorial apparatus. Memon makes his bias as selector quite clear ? he has chosen writers who have emerged since the partition of India in 1947. The earlier masters ? Premchand, Krishan Chandar, Manto, Chughtai and Rajinder Singh Bedi ? are absent in this anthology. The writers include Muhammad Salim-ur-Rahman, Parveen Sarwar, Balraj Manra, Naiyer Masud, Anwer Khan, Khalida Husain and Jeelani Bano. The editor?s brief preface traces the stories back to Premchand and the Progressive Writers? Movement, but shows how these later writers took the Urdu short story beyond this movement's achievements towards a form of ?post-realist? writing. There is very little documentation about the writers and translators ? dates, places of publication, further reading. This can be frustrating for the many readers who would be inspired by this anthology to want to read more of and about these writers. Naiyer Masud's ?Obscure Domains of Fear and Desire? is a particularly beautiful story.

Blues for a black cat and other stories (Rupa, Rs 195) by Boris Vian is Julia Older's delightful translation of this inimitable French writer?s story. As his friend, Louis Malle, explains in his preface, ?In Paris in the 1950s Boris Vian was everything ? poet, fiction writer, singer, subversive, actor, musician, and jazz critic.? Malle admired his friend passionately for his ?eclecticism, devastating irony, and taste for provocation?. From ?Cancer?: ?Jaques Teagarden didn?t feel well. His head stretched in one direction and his brain in another. In the intervening hollow, foreign bodies slowly introduced themselves ? fluid parasitic thoughts, and a sharp invasive pain similar to acid in the throat.?

Celebrating Krishna: Sacred words and sensuous images (Mapin, $ 35) by Harsha V. Dehejia looks like an invitation to a very opulent wedding. It is actually a collection of little reproductions of art ? from miniatures to Hussain ? depicting various aspects of the life of Krishna. These are the images; the words are a parallel text of the Bhagavata Purana.