Geetanjali Shree – författare

When a bomb explodes in a university cafe, nineteen students are killed. The Empty Space begins with the identification of these slain students. Slowly, each individual is claimed and taken away for a proper burial by their mourning family members. The final mother to enter the cafe identifies the nineteenth body as her eighteen-year-old son and brings him home in a casket. Not only does she bring home her dead son, though, but also the sole survivor of the blast, a three-year-old boy. By a strange quirk of fate, after the explosion he is found lying in a small empty space, alive and breathing. The Empty Space chronicles the memories of the boy dead, the story of the boy brought home, and the cataclysmic crossing of life and death.

First publication (outside of India) for this playful and moving masterpiece of psychological intrigue and feminist space-making by the International Booker winnerIn this Indian modern classic by the International Booker Prize-winning author, roofs are meant for wild things, for romance and for play. They are realms of freedom – freedom from the male gaze, sexual freedom and freedom from society. Chachcho and Lalna use their roofs to build a friendship that transcends time and memory.‘One of the finest Hindi writers, Geetanjali has created for herself a thoughtful, lyrical and contemporary fictional world, which is free from moral posturing and political hectoring. And Rahul Soni’s English translation of The Roof Beneath Their Feet is attentive to its poetic nuances and intelligently responsive to its complexity.’ Alok Bhalla‘In The Roof Beneath Their Feet, Geetanjali Shree has created a dazzling, multifaceted narrative that plays around with shifting time and perception, leading the reader on a wild journey as only she can. Rahul Soni’s fleet-footed translation keeps up with Shree’s pyrotechnics, nimbly evoking a world like no other.’ Jeremy Tiang