anuradha roy

“ELEGIAC, ANGRY AND IRONIC … [A] CLARION GLOBAL CHORUS” In the past five years, John Freeman, previously editor of Granta , has launched a celebrated international literary magazine, Freeman’s , and compiled two acclaimed anthologies that deal with income inequality as it is experienced.  Here, he draws together a group of our greatest writers from around the world to help us see how the environmental crisis is hitting some of the most vulnerable communities where they live. Galvanized by his conversations with writers and activists around the world, Freeman engaged with some of today’s most eloquent storytellers, many of whom hail from the places under the most acute stress–from the capital of Burundi to Bangkok, Thailand. The response has been extraordinary.  Margaret Atwood conjures up a dystopian future in a remarkable poem. Edwidge Danticat to Haiti; Tahmima Anam to Bangladesh; while Eka Kurniawan brings us to Indonesia, Chinelo Okparanta to Nigeria...

Late in 2018, I had a message from a stranger in the United States. He was delighted, he said, to see Bernard Leach’s A Potter’s Book included in my list of six favourites in a magazine he had been reading. He was a potter, his name was Jeff Diehl, and he thought the Leach classic was an unusual title to feature on a novelist’s list. I wrote back explaining that though my work was writing and designing book jackets, I made pots too (after a fashion).  Over the next months this kind stranger replied in careful detail to every question I asked him about kilns, glazes, pots, wheels. He sent me formulae for glazes he thought might work for me; he worked out programmes suited to my new kiln, sent video links, articles. The generosity was staggering. There also came fragments about Lockbridge Pottery, and his family and other animals: his potter-wife Donna, their two sons, their dog and cat. Our messages travelled on the internet, but they felt like letters....

The Nilimarani Sahitya Samman 2020 for contribution to Indian Literature  was instituted by the Odisha's prominent cultural magazine Kadambini. It was given last year to Odiya writer Manoj Das. To receive recognition for my work from writers and editors in Odisha, which has a remarkable literature of its own, was a great honour. The ceremony took place on 5th January in Bhubaneshwar, at a literature festival for local magazines that is run by Kadambini. (left to right) Achyuta Samanta, MP; Rahul Dev, journalist; Haraprasad Das, writer; Santanu Kumar Archarya, writer; Salman Khursheed, former foreign minister: Rajat Kapoor, theatre director; Mridula Garg, writer; Itirani Samanta, writer and editor Ever since I’ve come back from Bhubaneshwar I haven’t stopped telling people about the remarkable work that is being done by Kadambini and the Kalinga Institute of Social Sciences, which is another arm of the organisation. It was wonderful to experience the vibrant lite...

"Fans of Michael Ondaatje’s recent novel, “Warlight,” will appreciate Roy’s similarly sensitive exploration of a child’s mingled confusion, resentment and hope...Even more captivating than the unexpected turns of this plot is the way she reaches into the depths of melancholy but never  sinks into despair"  Ron Charles, Washington Post "Roy’s skillful blending–of fact and fiction, of personal and political, and of suspense and reward–creates a rich and layered read. But the modern resonances of rising nationalism, in India and beyond, ensure that Roy’s story of what happened in Muntazir transcends its own pages. “Once the letter was read,” Myshkin says, “it would be over and I would have to start waiting again.” It’s a feeling readers may well share" Naina Bajekal, Time Replete with the author’s characteristic virtues: an unerring eye for meaningful detail, vividly sensual descriptions of place, the ability to dwell in uncertainty, a luminous empathy for out...

Almost each time I am travelling to a country I've never been to, Christopher Maclehose, my publisher, sends me a book for the journey. On my first trip to Bali, he had sent Christina Jordis's Bali, Java, in My Dreams -- which introduced me to Walter Spies and started off my new book. When I was going to Iceland earlier this year for the Reykjavik Literature Festival, he gave me Independent People , by Halldor Laxness. This magnificent, engimatic tragedy is not to everyone's taste. When it was published in the US, Kirkus Reviews called it "A bleak and bitter book, with little to interest or attract the American reader". But I am not American, and although it mystified me at times and its main character Bjartur often made me very angry, this is one of the most brilliant books I've ever come across. It haunts me still, weeks later, and despite its length I know I'm going to go back to it. I don't know how it read in Icelandic, but in English tr...

I am going to miss the new show at Lockbridge Pottery on 23rd and 24th August, but cannot believe how lucky I am to be going there the week after because of a hugely generous invitation from potters Jeff Diehl and Donna Diehl. Jeff Diehl’s work has appeared in many prestigious collections worldwide, including the Smithsonian’s Renwick Gallery in Washington, D.C., and the Korean Craft Museum. He has been making pots for over forty years. They live and work in a converted schoolhouse, which they renovated and then built kilns around to fire their ceramics.  Of the pottery, an article by Lucia K. Hyde says:  Lockbridge Road in Summers County winds for several miles through rolling farmland, past houses and grassy meadows, before arriving at an old, two-room schoolhouse. The school sits well back from the road on tidy grounds. Clusters of flowers bloom around the broad front porch, and the school's canine mascot naps on the stone walkway. In the large fi...

Out now in Indian Quarterly Read the complete essay here The wind’s direction has been changing from south-west to north-north-east on my phone’s weather app as irregularly as a breeze throws around leaves. The sky clouds over, rain follows, icy with hail sometimes. The cold’s teeth sharpen. Snow is possible again and, although we know the mess afterwards, we want to be suspended in the dreamy silence it brings. This year though, there has been mostly sleet and ground frost that melted into muck, only once or twice the enchantments of a snowfall. This doesn’t feel like the start of warmth, but the earth knows more than humans do. Just a few days into February, in our part of the Himalaya, the soil changed. Overnight it had become loamier, more friable. The ice-hard, cold-dead ground was coming back to life. Worms slid through the clods when I forked the earth. Beads of green dotted the bare brown, multiplying every new morning into grass and weeds. In another week, below t...