I find the idea that we write alone laughable, even egotistical. Poetry is a palimpsest that has been endlessly rewritten—it’s a social space we share with others.
—
Jen Bervin
Vikram Chandra’s Love and Longing in Bombay by Betsy Sussler
Part of the Editor's Choice series.
- Gilles Peress by Carole Kismaric
- Matthew Ritchie by Jenifer Berman
- Tim Roth by Gary M. Kramer & Steve Buscemi
- Amy Hempel by Suzan Sherman
- Kendall Thomas by Lynne Tillman
- Christian Wolff by Damon Krukowski
- Emmylou Harris by Lucinda Williams
- George Walker by Stephen Haff
- Wallace Shawn by Patrick McGrath
Interviews
- Wolf Kahn by Stanley Moss
Artists on Artists
- Bruiser by Richard House
- Untimely Meditations by Saul Williams
- Brothers Keep Me Up by Suheir Hammad
- Jupiter by T'Kalla
- Two Poems by Tai Allen
- Memory of Loss by Amanda Means
- Wolf Soup by Vijay Seshadri
- Brooklyn Moon Cafe Poets by Zoë Anglesey
- Two Poems by Connie Deanovich
- Nosotros Necesitamos Zapatos Para Zapatistas by Federico Perez
- Van Gogh’s Bad Café by Frederic Tuten
- Sid by Jah'ni
- Jazz by Jasiri
- The Sweetest Revolutionary by Jessica Care Moore
- Kill Kill Faster Faster by Joel Rose
- Requiem by Kathy Acker
- The Keepsake by Kirsty Gunn
- Two Poems by Mariahadessa Ekere Tallie
First Proof
- Vikram Chandra’s Love and Longing in Bombay by Betsy Sussler
- Cédric Klapisch’s When the Cat’s Away by Liza Béar
- Patrick McGrath’s Asylum by Betsy Sussler
- Linda Yablonsky’s The Story of Junk by Lynne Tillman
- Rick Moody’s Purple America by Betsy Sussler
- Fernanda Eberstadt’s When the Sons of Heaven Meet the Daughters of Earth by Anney Bonney
- Robert Antoni’s Blessed is the Fruit by Jenifer Berman
- Yannick Murphy’s Sea of Trees by Suzan Sherman
- Kula Shaker: Retroculture by Lynn Geller
- Brad Mehldau by Zoë Anglesey
- Carolee Schneemann: Like a Cat on a Fish by Darryl Turner
- Judith Belzer by Jack Stephens
- Ingrid Calame by David Pagel
- Don Gast’s When We Were Kings by Jenifer Berman
- John Singleton’s Rosewood by Susan Shacter
- David Lehman’s Valentine Place by Robert Polito
- Bradford Morrow’s Giovanni’s Gift by Jim Lewis
Editor's Choice
Vikram Chandra. Photo by Pam Francis. Courtesy of Little, Brown.
Vikram Chandra’s Bombay shimmies with contradiction, seduction, and trouble. Born in India, and living now in Washington, DC, Chandra uses memory like a telescope. This collection of stories within stories, told by storyteller to narrator, structures a perfect conundrum for the mysteries of Bombay. Traditional genres—the ghost story, gossip, and social intrigue, homicide detectives and family dramas—become grist for the ultimate riddle: a life lived with humor, determination, and pathos is a life lived well. The East understands the word fate. And it is this understanding of the power of history, culture, and class that makes these stories shine with life. His characters do not rise above their lot by some meretricious act of super-heroism, but wind their way with circumvention and circumspection, by first acknowledging their place in the scheme of things. A career soldier returns to his childhood home and battles the ghost who haunts his past. A nouveau riche climbs her way to the pinnacle of social success aided by her servant. A young man loses his lover to Bombay’s underworld but saves his computer business with the undercover work of a sleuth. A detective solves a murder by cornering a member of a terrorist group.
The turmoil, horror, and pain of partition, the personal tolls, the fires and riots in the night, are ever present in these stories, which, like the culture that spawned them, are filled with wonder.
—Betsy Sussler
Love and Longing in Bombay was just published by Little, Brown and Company.
Related
One afternoon during the Holy Month, I have that indistinct but unmistakable sensation that I am being followed.
The writer on releasing her debut story collection, writing as a woman of color, and balancing a medical career with the writer’s life.
The writer on her new collection of seventy-eight stories, lyrical compression, and protecting artistic inner silence.
Originally published in
BOMB 59,
Spring 1997
Featuring interviews with Tim Roth, Amy Hempel, Emmylou Harris, Matthew Ritchie, Wallace Shawn, Christian Wolff, Gilles Peress, Kendall Thomas, and George Walker.
