Poetry Magazines - The best collection of poetry magazines online - Simon Armitage

Urvashi Butalia, ed. Inner Line: The Zubaan Anthology of Stories by Indian Women.
Zubaan, Price Rs.295, Pages 243, ISBN 81-89013-77-7.

Radha Chakravarty, ed. Bodymaps: Stories by South Asian Women.
Zubaan. Price Rs.295, Pages 186, ISBN 81-89884-02-6.

Anita Roy, ed. 21 Under 40: New Stories for a New Generations.
Zubaan, Price Rs.295, Pages 239, ISBN 978-81-89884-03-4.

   Urvashi Butalia, Radha Chakravarty, and Anita Roy’s edited anthologies by women writers more than amply show the substantial output and brimming fervency that is on display in the women’s writing scene in India and South Asia. Butalia and Chakravarty anthologies go for the tried and tested authors while Roy risks an anthology that is totally open to debate and discussion and daring. Taken together, they are a threesome treat from Zubaan.

   Reading nearly 50 stories, one emerges dizzy at the end of it — the contents are immensely diverse, authors concerns varied, writing style and form disparate — but all in all, a truly satisfying experience. In fact it was an over-indulgent feast, a plethora of voices competing with each other — and that can only be a good thing for writers.

   For me, the writers that stuck out making a memorable imprint after such a story feast are: Anjana Appachana, Mahasweta Devi, Ambai, Manjula Padmanabhan, Shashi Deshpande, Mridula Garg, Bulbul Sharma, Nayantara Sahgal, Githa Hariharan, Priya Sarukkai Chabria, Ismat Chugtai, Selina Hossain, Kamala Das, Tishani Doshi, Anjum Hasan, Nisha Susan, Annie Zaidi, Mridula Koshy, Epsita Halder, Swarnalatha Rangarajan, Adithi Rao, and Diana Romany.

   These three books require a much longer review essay to do the individual stories and authors proper justice, which I hope they get in the appropriate publications — a highly recommended triple feast from Zubaan.