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The Herald Scotland
08-06-2025
- Entertainment
- The Herald Scotland
James Kelman's delightfully deplorable language is f***ing necessary
So casually powerful. So f*****g unnecessary. So rhythmically right. Could have come from the mouth of a character in a novel or short story by this week's Icon. A typical James Kelman tale takes us into the foul-mouthed mind of a downtrodden proletarian. Its Glaswegian is unsparing, its language delightfully or because of this, his novel How Late It Was, How Late won the Booker Prize for Punctuality in 1994 … with hilarious consequences. Ructions were occasioned. Strops occurred. The English language formed a picket line. So, who was this stirrer? Well, James Kelman was born on 9 June 1947 in Glasgow, a large city in western Scotland. He has spake thusly: 'My own background is as normal or abnormal as anyone else's. Born and bred in Govan and Drumchapel, inner city tenement to the housing scheme homeland on the outer reaches of the city.' He left school at 15 to undertake a six-year printing apprenticeship. After driving buses in Govan, he began writing when he worked in London's Barbican Centre. 'I wanted to write as one of my own people,' he has declared. His first short story collection, Not Not While the Giro, was published in 1983, with 26 tales including the titular one, wherein the protagonist briefly contemplates suicide before remembering his benefit cheque is due. Kelman's first published novel was The Busconductor Hines (1984), a portrait of a man who hates his job, is bored with life, and dreams without expectation of better days. GONE TO THE DOGS ANOTHER collection, Greyhound for Breakfast, featured 47 stories, some v. short, such as the eight-line 'Leader from a Quality Newspaper', and some jolly long, such as the one involving the aforementioned canine repast, about a hopelessly unemployed man who spends his last money optimistically on a racing dog, which he cannot afford to feed. His pals laugh and he responds: 'I'll tell yous mob something: see if this f*****g dog doesn't get me the holiday money I'll eat it for my f*****g breakfast.' Blimey, at this rate, Herald stores will be running out of f*****g asterisks. Bizarrely, Greyhound won the, er, Cheltenham Prize for Literature. But, by now, it was clear that Kelman had been unduly influenced by The Good Life with Richard Briers and Penelope Keith. His 1989 novel A Disaffection was shortlisted for the Booker and won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Fiction. It tells of a week in the life of a Glaswegian school teacher afflicted by boredom, loneliness, depression, municipal gloom and sexual frustration.A London Review of Books critic judged A Disaffection 'pretty terrific', while a Times Literary Supplement reviewer said it 'can be read as a fuller orchestration of its solipsistic lament'. Solipsistic, aye. But let's cut to the stooshie proper with the English Literary Establishment. It's fair to say that, despite its poncy sounding title, How Late It Was, How Late would not make ideal beach holiday reading. In it, unemployed Glaswegian Sammy Samuleson wakes up in a police cell after a night on the swallie, only to find he's gone blind. The consequent narrative recounts his struggle against baffling bureaucracy, unhelpful doctors and cruel strangers. One American news outlet found its vernacular 'difficult for non-Scottish readers'. And, oh, the profanity! In its 400 pages, the 'common street word for sex' was used 4,000 times. This became a major issue, though not the only one, when in 1994 How Late won the Booker Prize, with Kelman the first Scot so honoured. At the ceremony, he stood out like a bottle of Buckie at Harrod's, wearing a regular suit and open-necked shirt to the glittering, televised, black tie dinner at London's Guildhall. JUDGMENT DAZE THE judging panel was divided, but Kelman won by three votes to two. One judge, Rabbi Julia Neuberger, stormed out, denouncing the decision as 'a disgrace'. The book, she said was 'not publicly accessible' and 'frankly', she added in an ironically unsophisticated critique, 'crap'. Kelman protested: 'My culture and my language have the right to exist, and no one has the authority to dismiss that.'One executive from food distributor and sponsor Booker McConnell was overheard calling his performance 'a bloody disgrace.' Well, that was certainly food distribution for Simon Jenkins, writing in the Times, a tabloid-shaped newspaper, said Kelman had done no more than 'transcribe the rambling thoughts of a blind Glaswegian drunk'. He called the award 'literary vandalism' and likened Kelman to an 'illiterate savage'. Lest anyone think this a Scotland v England thing, Sam Jordison, writing some years later in the Guardian, described How Late as 'one of the best winners in the prize's history', adding: '[A]ttacks on Kelman for having the audacity to use a demotic voice, and allow his protagonist to speak and think in his own tongue, now just seem like so much snobbery.' In the New York Times, Richard Bausch said: 'Objections to the language in which this good book is couched seem to me to be so far beside the point as to be rather ridiculous.' Nevertheless, Kelman's work has been called monotonous, miserable, unpunctuated, foulmouthed, boring, tedious, narrow, minimalistic, claustrophobic and repetitive. He has also been called repetitive. So, pretty good then. READ MORE: Robert McNeil: I detest yon Romans but I dig excavating their wee fortlets RAB MCNEIL'S SCOTTISH ICONS: John Knox – the fiery preacher whose pal got burnt at the stake Rab McNeil: All this talk about celebs and their neuroses is getting on my nerves ABOUT A BOY HIS 2008 novel Kieron Smith, Boy, about a young laddie in post-war Glasgow whose family moves from a traditional tenement to a new housing scheme, was hailed as 'a masterpiece' and won both the Saltire Society's and Scottish Arts Council's books of the year. In 2010's short story collection, If It Is Your Life, wider social life is tentatively explored, with a Scottish student returning from England and talking 'properly' because, if he did not, 'people did not know what I was talking about'. On the other hand, in 'Death Is Not.', the dying narrator declares: 'Death is not, is not, isnay … death is not, it is nought. Death is not really, it isnay …' Soon to be made into a film by Walt Isnay.
Yahoo
07-06-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Wondering where to start with Dostoevsky? Try his Ukrainian contemporaries instead
Since the start of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, a growing debate has emerged over the cultural and political legacy of Russian literature — particularly the global reverence for classic Russian authors, which critics argue has long served to promote the imperial narratives embedded in their work. As Ukrainian author Oksana Zabuzhko wrote in the Times Literary Supplement in 2022, their works of literature are 'the camouflage net' for Russian tanks in Ukraine. Among the most famous classic Russian authors is 19th-century Russian author Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821–1881). More than a century after his death, Dostoevsky remains a dominant figure in the world literary canon, his name recognized even by those who have never read his work. This April, Penguin Books reissued an English-language edition of his short story 'The Dream of a Ridiculous Man,' while his novella 'White Nights' continues to enjoy popularity among online literary communities. Defenders of Dostoevsky maintain that his writing transcends politics, focusing on existential and psychological themes. They argue that interpreting his work through a nationalist or imperialist lens oversimplifies the complexity of his ideas. But many scholars and commentators point to Dostoevsky's spiritual vision of Russia's destiny — a vision that portrays the country as a moral, unifying force against a 'decaying' West that was, at the time, heading toward the Gilded Age. They draw parallels between this worldview and that of contemporary Russian ideologues like Alexander Dugin, who frame Russian aggression in near-religious terms. As the war continues, it remains to be seen whether Russia's literary past can be disentangled from its politics. Rather than calling for a boycott of Russian authors, the Kyiv Independent wants to raise a more illuminating question: Why do so few English-language readers know the Ukrainian authors who were the contemporaries of Dostoevsky? The lack of global recognition for Ukraine's classic writers is not coincidental. It reflects a legacy of imperial domination, during which the Russian Empire frequently suppressed the Ukrainian language and culture, the same empire that Dostoevsky often praised in his writings. Some of the most influential voices in the history of Ukrainian literature were active during the same period as Dostoevsky. Others who came just before him, like Mykola Gogol, are known worldwide but have long been misclassified as 'Russian.' Literary figures such as Lesia Ukrainka and Ivan Franko, who came to the literary scene just after Dostoevsky's time, are now reemerging in English translation — their essential works poised to resonate with a global audience, just as they once did across the European intellectual landscape. Although there is no evidence that Dostoevsky knew his Ukrainian contemporaries, they did interact with some other famous Russian authors. Below is a brief overview of three Ukrainian authors of the 19th century and the themes that shaped their work. The purpose of this list is not to outright dismiss Russian literature, but rather to remind people of the selective nature of the global literary canon, and to draw attention to the Ukrainian voices that have long been overlooked or marginalized. Born a serf, Ukrainian national icon Taras Shevchenko gained his freedom thanks to his artistic talent. But liberation did not end his struggle — instead, it sharpened his focus on the plight of his people under Russian imperial rule. A pioneer of ethnographic art and literature, Shevchenko used both pen and brush to document the everyday lives of Ukrainians, casting a critical eye on their subjugation and the erasure of their culture. Published in 1840, 'Kobzar' is widely regarded as Taras Shevchenko's defining work. The collection takes its name from traditional Ukrainian musicians who sang of Cossack heroism while playing the kobza, a stringed instrument. The poems reflect on the cultural and political struggles of Ukraine under Russian rule. In 'To Kvitka-Osnovianenko,' Shevchenko pays tribute to the writer Hryhorii Kvitka-Osnovianenko, an early advocate of Ukrainian as a literary language, and mourns the destruction of the Zaporizhzhian Sich, the Cossacks' last stronghold, in the 18th century. Another poem, 'Kateryna,' tells the story of a young Ukrainian woman seduced and abandoned by a Russian imperial soldier, highlighting the personal toll of imperial domination. Shevchenko was deeply influenced by ideas of national identity, language, and self-determination — views that drew the ire of the tsarist authorities. He was arrested in 1847 and exiled to military service in a remote part of Kazakhstan. According to historical accounts, Tsar Nicholas I reportedly ordered that Shevchenko be restricted from writing or painting. However, Shevchenko still managed to create art and later returned briefly to Ukraine before his death. Read also: Looking to read Ukraine-related books? We picked the best of 2024 Kulish's politics were somewhat complex, perhaps even contradictory to some. In his early years, he was affiliated with the Brotherhood of Saints Cyril and Methodius, a short-lived secret political society that existed between 1845 and 1847. The group championed the federalization of the Russian Empire, a Ukrainian language and culture revival, and the abolition of serfdom, among other initiatives. Over time, however, Kulish's stance diverged from mainstream Ukrainian thought, particularly as he advocated for the preservation of a distinct Ukrainian culture while simultaneously supporting a political union with Russia. This position ultimately led to his marginalization in many Ukrainian intellectual circles, both in Russian-controlled Ukraine and the parts of Ukraine under the rule of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Despite this, Kulish continues to be respected and read by many Ukrainians today for his literary achievements. His novel 'The Black Council' (1857) is considered the first historical novel in Ukrainian literature. Set against the backdrop of the Ruin — the tumultuous period following the death of Cossack Hetman Bohdan Khmelnytskyi in 1657 — it delves into the power struggles that ensued. The novel draws inspiration from the Black Council of 1663, a pivotal gathering in Nizhyn in modern-day Chernihiv Oblast, where nobles and commoners alike converged to elect a new hetman for left-bank Ukraine. The novel not only captures the fierce internal conflicts among Cossack leaders but also explores the deep social rifts that defined one of Ukraine's most fractured and tragic eras. Excerpts of the novel have been translated online. However, a full publication of the book in English translation has yet to materialize. Among Ukraine's most talented female writers was Marko Vovchok, whose 'Folk Stories' was published in 1857, shortly after the ascension of Tsar Alexander II, initially seen as a reform-minded ruler compared to his father, Nicholas I. However, while the serfs were liberated under his rule in 1861, it could be argued that the liberal period of his rule, at least for Ukrainians, was short-lived: a decree in 1863 banned Ukrainian-language publications, followed by the stricter Ems Ukaz of 1876. Vovchok's collection gained even greater significance in this repressive climate. Focused on the suffering of Ukrainian peasants — especially women — under serfdom, the stories were informed by her early work assisting her husband's ethnographic research. She gathered material directly from villagers, preserving oral traditions. Russian writer Ivan Turgenev translated the stories into Russian, sparking additional debate in literary circles over the realities of serfdom. Shevchenko is said to have recommended her work to Turgenev, declaring her 'the most powerful in our language.' In the short story 'The Cossack Girl' from the collection, Olesia, a free woman, falls in love with a serf and chooses to marry him, ultimately sacrificing her freedom. Her family warns her that marrying a serf will disgrace their village and its Cossack heritage, even suggesting that she might as well 'drown herself.' Olesia insists that love is more important than social status. The marriage, however, proves disastrous, with Olesia, her husband, and their children enduring significant hardship. Under empire, happy endings are a rarity — if they exist at all. Hi, this is Kate Tsurkan, thank you for reading this article. Here at the Kyiv Independent, we don't put stories behind a paywall, because we believe the world needs to know the truth of Russia's war. To fund our reporting, we rely on our community of over 18,000 members from around the world, most of whom give just $5 a month. We're aiming to reach 20,000 soon — join our community and help us reach this goal. Read also: 10 authors shaping contemporary Ukrainian literature We've been working hard to bring you independent, locally-sourced news from Ukraine. Consider supporting the Kyiv Independent.
Scroll.in
07-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Scroll.in
Tragic idiom: Reading Banu Mushtaq in Kannada for the context and themes of her ‘rebellion' stories
Banu Mushtaq's International Booker Prize-winning short story collection Heart Lamp is littered with a gamut of affecting objects and people: callous husbands, self-serving mutawallis, loving children, and women of all stripes. These women are, by turns, sexy, demanding, obstruse, and suffering. Kate McLoughlin notes in the Times Literary Supplement: 'here are wicked in-laws, bedazzled officials, revered mother figures,' and no doubt Mushtaq's is a literary space where 'feuds fester until families are left rancid' and where 'the gossip is radioactive.' Amidst all this action, however, it was a mango tree in the story 'High-Heeled Shoe' that really stood out to me as exemplary of what Mushtaq's stories capture: the quiet brutality of the everyday life of its characters, particularly Muslim women across different class contexts in Karnataka. In the story, Nayaz Khan's ancestral home has a large mango tree in front. It has formed a cornerpiece of his childhood memories with his brother. Over the years, he has gained from the solicitude enabled by it: 'he would give baskets upon baskets of the fruit to his colleagues'. He has also made money by selling the fruit, but he is now increasingly irritated by the fact that it occupies monetizable real estate. Its felling triggers copious tears from his wife Arifa, as the tree's sour fruit had fed her first pregnancy's cravings, and builds a tomb over his brother's memories of the tree's cool shade. Around the felled mango tree, simmering tensions in the family come to a boil, resulting in an irreconcilable breakdown of communication and relationships. Reading from Bangalore Similar tragedies prevail in nearly every story in Mushtaq's work, whether in the translated collection or in the six Kannada short story collections from which Deepa Bhasthi curated the final prize-winning set. I procured the original set from the popular Bangalore bookstore Bookworm, which I have frequented since their original location in a small alley of MG Road in the 2000s before their move to a bigger, leafier location on Church Street. The celebration and jubilation about the prize that has followed in the state – covered extensively by local newspapers such as the Kannada Prajavani, and the English daily Deccan Herald – has meant that Mushtaq's publishers have worked double-time to fulfil the demand for her work. Bookworm, for one, has had to restock the Kannada collected edition of all her short fiction since the win. Aside from the global audience who are only just discovering Mushtaq's brilliance, it is not only the non-Kannadiga audiences in India who have joined this belated circle of cheerleaders, but also Kannada readers who were largely unaware of Mushtaq's impressive oeuvre before the win. Many readers are asking about the Kannada original of Banu Mushtaq's Heart Lamp. Copies of ಹಸೀನಾ ಮತ್ತು ಇತರ ಕಥೆಗಳು are available with us at ₹675/- after discount. Kindly visit us for your copy or whatsapp to 9845076757 for home delivery (all-India). — Bookworm Bookstore, Blr (@bookworm_Kris) May 22, 2025 When I told my mother about Mushtaq's win, she raised her eyebrows quizzically in response to the International Booker Prize's existence. She is only an occasional reader of Kannada fiction, and mostly works by women writers, if at all. My mother is also from Mushtaq's hometown, Hassan, which is about three hours from Bangalore. When asked about her work, she reminisced: 'I haven't read her, but I've heard of her. When I was staying in my sister's house in Hassan just before marriage, around 1987, there was a girl in my neighbour's house who was named Banu. Whenever my uncle visited our house, he would ask her, 'Yen samaachara Banu Mushtaq?' (What's the latest news, Banu Mushtaq?) because she was very outspoken. She was quite well known in Hassan even then.' The last time I caught her reading anything at all was when she was squinting at her phone, engrossed in the Kannada stories on the Pratilipi website. After I ordered the Kannada consolidated collection, my mother refused to read the stories because she resolutely believes the only reasonable justification for reading fiction is to turn its way for the purpose of delight – and firmly away from the tragedies of real life. But my idea of strategically placing the thick tome in our living room seems to have resulted in her reluctance thawing. 'I started reading the first story and had to go away to do some work, and I lost the page. Of course I'll read the book – what do you mean?' she asked me indignantly, miffed at my presumptuousness when I prompted her again after a respectable interval. I hope she will read it with an open mind, as it is tragedy which is the dominant theme in Mushtaq's work. The story 'Stone Slabs for Shaista Mahal' narrates a snapshot in the life of the eponymous character Shaista, who succumbs to the rigours of multiple pregnancies. Her husband's hyperbolic declarations of love are belied by his choice to replace her in a trice with a second wife after her death. Another story, 'Black Cobras,' recounts the plight of Aashraf, whose husband, Yakub, abandons their family after the birth of three successive daughters. She is then seen literally and metaphorically 'banging on the grand door of Allah's house' for justice. This story's original, 'Karinagarugalu,' was adapted into the movie Hasina by auteur Girish Kasaravalli. The movie earned a National Film Award for the Kannada actress Taara, alongside two other National awards for best costume design and best film on family welfare. For readers unable to read Kannada, it is an excellent way to experience the language's spoken form in Mushtaq's stories. (It is available to watch in full, with English subtitles, on YouTube.) As Bhasthi notes in her translator's note at the end of the book, 'Against Italics,' Mushtaq's work shows an easy 'code-switching between the three-four languages [Mushtaq and Bhasthi] engage with daily [which] results in a delightful mix of Kannada, Urdu, Arabic, Dakhni and a Kannada spoken by specific communities in specific localities of the Hassan region'. At home, Mushtaq speaks Dakhni, 'often wrongly identified as a dialect of Urdu,' as Bhasthi notes, 'but which in fact is a mix of Persian, Dehlavi, Marathi, Kannada, and Telugu,' [whereas] 'Kannada is Banu's language at work and what she encounters on the street'. The Kannada story 'Aaspathreya Ondu Dina' ('A Day at the Hospital') is interesting in this regard. It appears in Hejje Moodida Haadi (The Path Where the Footprints Appeared), the first collection in the consolidated Kannada edition Hasina Mattu Itara Kathegalu (Hasina and Other Stories), which was first published in 2013, and later republished by Abhiruchi Prakashana in 2025 after the inclusion of a sixth collection of short stories, Hennu Haddina Swayamvara (A Female Eagle's Swayamvara). The story narrates a day in the life of a writer named Sudha visiting her friend and doctor, Sheela, at a district hospital in Karnataka. The various registers of Kannada, and the code-switching seen in this story, capture the social disparities visible in everyday encounters between the characters who populate these contexts. Two impoverished women approach Sheela to acquire a certification of disability which will enable them to access government welfare funds, but are thwarted by bureaucratic red tape. These women speak in a clipped version of Kannada with compound words and colloquial truncation, reflecting a rural spoken register. ('Avva! Idu nannakka. Nammavva nodkanthidlu, sathhodlu. Eega namthava bandavle.' 'Madam! This is my elder sister. My mother used to look after her, but she died. Now she has come to us.') On the other hand, the writer and the doctor speak in a mixture of Kannada and English. Revelatory of their class status, this is also emblematic of the use of English in professional contexts across many parts of Karnataka. (Sudha tells Sheela at one point, 'Aitu bidu, you are not answerable to me. Heege 'casual'aagi vichariside.' 'Leave it, you are not answerable to me. I enquired casually.') The only story Bhasti has picked from this collection is 'Stone Slabs for Shaista Mahal.' Four are from Mushtaq's second collection, Benki Male (Fire Rain), three from Yedeya Hanathe (Heart Lamp), one from Safira, another from Badavara Magalu Hennalla (A Daughter of the Poor is Not a Woman), and two from her final collection, Hennu Haddina Swayamvara. Many of the female protagonists of Mushtaq's stories are educated figures who often act as ethical custodians, imparting knowledge of the world to illiterate or underprivileged counterparts, while informing them about their rights. The protagonist of 'A Day at the Hospital' is one such writer-sentry, as is Zulekha Begum in the story 'Black Cobras.' Aashraf is a domestic worker in her house, where she can be found reading 'fat-fat books' all day long. She encourages Aashraf to write a petition to the mosque to address the injustice she has suffered at her husband's hands. Women and rebellion These characters, in particular, appear as author surrogates channelling Mushtaq's own fiery lawyer-activist literary persona, which evolved in the context of a larger literary, cultural and political movement in the state, captured in the Bandaya and Dalita Sahitya of the 1970s and the 1980s. Bandaya Sahitya – rebellious or protest literature – in Kannada was a subversive response to the more politically conservative Navya (modernist) literary movement in Kannada. Its domination by male and upper-caste Hindu voices was vigorously contested by radical Dalit and Muslim voices, which included Mushtaq. This is not to say that some of the better-known canonical modernist Kannada writers, such as UR Ananthamurthy or Girish Karnad, failed to be conscious of the violence enacted by hierarchies of gender and caste. (Aside from their general popularity, their works continue to circulate in popular English translations and are frequently included in undergraduate and graduate literature curricula in India and abroad.) If you momentarily set aside the more recent rise to fame of Vivek Shanbhag's Ghachar Ghochar (2015) in Srinath Perur's English translation, Ananthamurthy's Samskara (1972), translated by the multilingual literary giant AK Ramanujan, is probably the best-known work of Kannada in translation the world over. A powerful critique of the caste system from the vantage point of a male Brahmin protagonist, it nevertheless fails to offer full humanness and interiority to other subaltern characters. As Srikar Raghavan points out, female characters like Chandri in the novel do not have a completely developed inner world. Hindu women writers such as Triveni and MK Indira also had to wait a long time to be given their due in the Kannada publishing industry. Raghavan's recently published Rama Bhima Soma (2025) is a rigorously-researched cultural investigation of modern Karnataka, and a fantastic primer for the probing reader invested in understanding the political contestations that underpinned the emergence of Muslim women writers such as those of Mushtaq and Sara Aboobacker. The combative and multi-faceted cultural icon and writer P Lankesh first gave space to both writers in his weekly publication Lankesh Patrike. In her foreword to her reprinted Kannada collection, Mushtaq expresses gratitude to him and the Bandaya writer and veteran Baraguru Ramachandrappa for 'giving her writing a direction and expanding the boundaries of her thinking.' Mushtaq's literary expression denotes a clearing of space in the Kannada cultural sphere on many counts. As a Muslim Bandaya writer, her work is opposed not only to normative, Hindu upper-caste, male-dominated literary production in Kannada during the latter half of the 20th century, but also within the domain of political critique in and about Muslim communities in Karnataka. Her work in talking truth to power about the hypocrisies of religious orthodoxy in these communities, their oppressive and highly patriarchal religious norms, further opened a conduit to articulate a women-centric experience, which prominent male Muslim writers in Kannada also often hesitated to voice. Her call for internal reform in relation to women's rights in these spaces landed her with a fatwa in 2000, leading to her social boycott. Her activism highlights the complex socio-cultural positionality of women in these hyper-local communities. It emphasises the need both to be uncompromising about women's rights within them, while also bringing attention to how internal divisions have made them vulnerable to Hindu fundamentalism in contemporary India, in turn, causing a suppression of Islamic habits and practices. As much as her writing is politically fearless, it is also deeply personal. The title piece of her prize-winning collection, Heart Lamp, tells the story of Mehrun who tries to kill herself after her family life goes horribly wrong. She is saved in the nick of time by her daughter who senses in her demeanour that something is seriously off. This harrowing story is perhaps an autobiographical echo of Mushtaq's own brush with death after a long spell of depression post-marriage, which she has recounted with brutal honesty in a recent interview. The women characters in Mushtaq's stories are acutely aware of their oppression, and offer a reckoning of freedom within patriarchal contexts as a willed and continued negotiation. The story 'Love Bird' from Mushtaq's first collection is a case in point. It depicts the protagonist Sujatha switching from starry-eyed love to bitter regret and compromise after she realises the true nature of the man she chose to marry in spite of warnings from her family. The story ends with her resignation: 'Thanu ondu nela, bhadrate, gaurava mattu hana – ivugaligagi avanannu ashrayisabeku. Ishte tammibbara sambandha. Kevala vyavaharika!' (She would have to give him refuge in her life for a residence, security, respect, and money. That was the extent of their relationship. Only transactional!') Yet another story, 'Ardha Aakashada Mauna' (Half a Sky's Silence) is epistolary in form, with the letter writer Nabeela conscientiously demanding accountability from her ex-fiancé when he chooses to marry someone else after a long engagement. The letter spells out how her desires and dreams have been shattered, and their failed relationship underscores the systemic way in which patriarchy and religion keep women reliant on men for economic and social legitimation. After the Prize Following the public reception of the book after the prize has been particularly interesting for me as a comparative scholar of English and Kannada writing: I am especially curious about how Kannada literature travels in translation around the anglophone world through the flows and circuits of the global prestige economy. The journalist and critic Deepanjana Pal recently observed that these are stories 'written about and for women' and have characters which 'are often unabashedly sentimental and dramatic, wailing at the world that restrains them, and also challenging what is considered respectable.' The title of one of Mushtaq's stories, 'Be a Woman Once, O Lord!' exemplifies this drama. But Pal also feels, 'this is a volume that doesn't draw you in as much as guilt you into finishing it…[and] the selection feels monotonous rather than diverse…[The stories] follow predictable arcs and are populated by characters who become a sad, unidimensional blur.' Interestingly, as I was scouring the internet to gauge general opinion about the book in the lead-up to the prize announcement, this was a view that was at least partly echoed by many social-media reviewers of the International Booker Prize shortlist. Some dismissed the short story collection with a terse description of its importance – noting little else than that it captured the situated experiences of women in a socio-culturally specific landscape in Karnataka. Or assumed that a short story collection would never win the prize. Banu Mushtaq's overwhelmingly tragic narratives certainly owe an affective debt to the political objectives of the Bandaya Sanghatane, but I suspect there is more to be explored in how it speaks to an existing cultural idiom of sentimentality in Kannada literature and popular melodramatic cinema. Particularly in movies starring the superhit actresses Shruti and Sithara in the decades parallel to Mushtaq's literary production, this was the predominant emotional overlay which framed how similar women protagonists were portrayed in Kannada cinema, doubly condemned by their biology and patriarchy. But this is not the right place for that excursive analysis. The discourse around the politics of its translation has also been equally fascinating, where some of my friends and translators reading the Kannada and English together have wondered what the translation choices in the work say about questions of 'authenticity' or 'exoticism' – even though this is, admittedly, a reductive binary. As the Booker Prize judges noted, the translation is indeed powerful because it 'ruffles language to create new textures in a plurality of Englishes.' However, for me, more than estrangement and novelty, it demonstrates the ways in which many of the characters populating Mushtaq's stories easily inhabit a continuum of hybrid, multilingual ethno-religious spaces in Karnataka. To quote the bilingual intellectual Sugata Srinivasaraju, the stories embody various forms of 'rooted cosmopolitanism' in the Kannada public sphere – and there isn't a better example of this than Banu Mushtaq and Deepa Bhasthi on the International Booker Prize stage.
Scotsman
06-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Scotsman
Elizabeth Longford Brief Lives 2025 Essay Award offer Edinburgh young writers an opportunity to win £2000
Watch more of our videos on and on Freeview 262 or Freely 565 Visit Shots! now Celebrated authors, Antonia Fraser and Flora Fraser, and Fellow Historical Biographers and Historians Launch New Essay Award: Elizabeth Longford Brief Lives 2025 Sign up to our daily newsletter Sign up Thank you for signing up! Did you know with a Digital Subscription to Edinburgh News, you can get unlimited access to the website including our premium content, as well as benefiting from fewer ads, loyalty rewards and much more. Learn More Sorry, there seem to be some issues. Please try again later. Submitting... Young writers from Edinburgh have the opportunity to win a prize of £2000 by entering a new essay competition created and judged by award-winning historical biographers and historians. Celebrated authors, Antonia Fraser and Flora Fraser, and fellow historical biographers and historians launch today (May 6th) a new literary prize worth £2000 for younger writers: the Elizabeth Longford Brief Lives 2025 Essay Award. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Entries will be appraised by the judges, all eminent historical biographers and historians, of the Elizabeth Longford Prize for Historical Biography (2003). The panel consists of Professor Roy Foster (Chair of Judges), Flora Fraser, Antonia Fraser (Elizabeth Longford's daughter), Richard Davenport-Hines, and Professor Rana Mitter. The winning essay will be considered for publication in the Times Literary Supplement. Celebrated author, Flora Fraser and Fellow Historical Biographers and Historians Launch New Essay Award: Elizabeth Longford Brief Lives 2025 The Brief Lives 2025 Essay Award is open to writers in the UK and Ireland aged 35 and younger, and essays may be submitted from now until 30 September 2025 inclusive. The word limit is 3,000 or fewer, and the biographical subject, or subjects, should be historical figures of significance. See for more details about the Award, including eligibility. Submissions for the Elizabeth Longford Brief Lives 2025 Essay Award, in pdf form, to be made to: [email protected] Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad The Essay Award winner will be announced at an Elizabeth Longford Night of History at the National Portrait Gallery on 26 January 2026. This will incorporate a panel discussion by leading practitioners of historical biography followed by a reception. The Elizabeth Longford Brief Lives 2025 Essay Award is sponsored, as is the Elizabeth Longford Prize for Historical Biography, by Peter Soros and Flora Fraser. They founded the Prize, worth £5000, in 2003 in affectionate memory of Flora's grandmother, the distinguished biographer of Queen Victoria and the Duke of Wellington. Recent winners include books by Julian Jackson on de Gaulle, Jackie Wullschläger on Monet and Ramachandra Guha's Rebels Against the Raj. Flora and Peter are now sponsoring the new Elizabeth Longford Brief Lives 2025 Essay Award. It is intended to encourage a succinct but penetrating approach to historical biography, as pioneered by John Aubrey. Submissions for the Award should also embody the qualities of scholarship and strong narrative drive which distinguish Elizabeth Longford's own work and that of former recipients of the ELHB Prize. Chair of Judges, Professor Roy Foster, says, 'The Elizabeth Longford Prize for Historical Biography has fostered a greater appreciation of historical biography as a genre and of the significant role it plays in helping us understand both the past and the present. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad 'The Elizabeth Longford Brief Lives 2025 Essay Award similarly seeks to reward younger writers who can offer new insights and bring historical figures vividly to life within a short compass.' Flora Fraser says, 'My grandmother was passionate about encouraging younger authors to write and explore the art of historical biography. We hope that this new award will motivate a new generation to research and write about the past with depth and imagination. We are very much looking forward to receiving and reading submissions.'
Scotsman
06-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Scotsman
Elizabeth Longford Brief Lives 2025 Essay Award offers Scottish young writers an opportunity to win £2000
Celebrated authors, Antonia Fraser and Flora Fraser, and Fellow Historical Biographers and Historians Launch New Essay Award: Elizabeth Longford Brief Lives 2025 Sign up to our daily newsletter – Regular news stories and round-ups from around Scotland direct to your inbox Sign up Thank you for signing up! Did you know with a Digital Subscription to The Scotsman, you can get unlimited access to the website including our premium content, as well as benefiting from fewer ads, loyalty rewards and much more. Learn More Sorry, there seem to be some issues. Please try again later. Submitting... Young writers from Scotland have the opportunity to win a prize of £2000 by entering a new essay competition created and judged by award-winning historical biographers and historians. Celebrated authors, Antonia Fraser and Flora Fraser, and fellow historical biographers and historians launch today (May 6th) a new literary prize worth £2000 for younger writers: the Elizabeth Longford Brief Lives 2025 Essay Award. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Entries will be appraised by the judges, all eminent historical biographers and historians, of the Elizabeth Longford Prize for Historical Biography (2003). The panel consists of Professor Roy Foster (Chair of Judges), Flora Fraser, Antonia Fraser (Elizabeth Longford's daughter), Richard Davenport-Hines, and Professor Rana Mitter. The winning essay will be considered for publication in the Times Literary Supplement. Celebrated author, Flora Fraser and Fellow Historical Biographers and Historians Launch New Essay Award: Elizabeth Longford Brief Lives 2025 The Brief Lives 2025 Essay Award is open to writers in the UK and Ireland aged 35 and younger, and essays may be submitted from now until 30 September 2025 inclusive. The word limit is 3,000 or fewer, and the biographical subject, or subjects, should be historical figures of significance. See for more details about the Award, including eligibility. Submissions for the Elizabeth Longford Brief Lives 2025 Essay Award, in pdf form, to be made to: Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad The Essay Award winner will be announced at an Elizabeth Longford Night of History at the National Portrait Gallery on 26 January 2026. This will incorporate a panel discussion by leading practitioners of historical biography followed by a reception. The Elizabeth Longford Brief Lives 2025 Essay Award is sponsored, as is the Elizabeth Longford Prize for Historical Biography, by Peter Soros and Flora Fraser. They founded the Prize, worth £5000, in 2003 in affectionate memory of Flora's grandmother, the distinguished biographer of Queen Victoria and the Duke of Wellington. Recent winners include books by Julian Jackson on de Gaulle, Jackie Wullschläger on Monet and Ramachandra Guha's Rebels Against the Raj. Flora and Peter are now sponsoring the new Elizabeth Longford Brief Lives 2025 Essay Award. It is intended to encourage a succinct but penetrating approach to historical biography, as pioneered by John Aubrey. Submissions for the Award should also embody the qualities of scholarship and strong narrative drive which distinguish Elizabeth Longford's own work and that of former recipients of the ELHB Prize. Chair of Judges, Professor Roy Foster, says, 'The Elizabeth Longford Prize for Historical Biography has fostered a greater appreciation of historical biography as a genre and of the significant role it plays in helping us understand both the past and the present. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad 'The Elizabeth Longford Brief Lives 2025 Essay Award similarly seeks to reward younger writers who can offer new insights and bring historical figures vividly to life within a short compass.'
