Words for Worlds: Issue 83
Hello everyone, and welcome to another issue of the Words for Worlds newsletter!
The Sentence is now twenty days into the world (get it here, or in your local bookshop)! The novel received its first Indian review - in The Hindustan Times - by Akankshya Abismruta, who’s given it very detailed and very loving treatment. Akankshya, of course, is a genre critic who writes frequently for Strange Horizons, and I think it’s a really welcome development that we now have reviews of SF novels, written by SF critics, in mainstream Indian newspapers. You can always tell when someone steeped in the genre reviews your work - there’s a shared way of seeing that’s immediately evident.
Speaking of welcome developments, I am in Bombay this week, and I was on a panel at LitLive on Saturday, dedicated to contemporary Indian SF. There was a full house, and book signings afterwards: I cannot recall literary festivals having dedicated SF panels up until a few years before, but now they’ve become quite the staple. Only good signs!
Speaking of events, if you’re in Bombay this week, do come to the Bombay launch of The Sentence, where I’ll be in conversation with … Kanan Gill!
Folks on Twitter are marvelling at how this crossover came to be, but I should point out that Kanan is an SF writer, whose debut novel, Acts of God, came out earlier this year. Seeing the reaction on social media, though, I get the feeling that we don’t just share genres, but also, struggle to have our work as SF writers come out of the shadows of our day jobs!
What I’m Reading
A decade after I’d read it for the first time, I came back to re-read Mourid Barghouti’s I Saw Ramallah (Barghouti passed away in the meantime). This is a book that shaped me in many ways when I first read it - and ten years on, Barghouti’s words have lost none of their beauty. I found myself pausing at lines that I had read ten years ago, lines that had lingered in my mind, but which struck me with the painful intensity of first contact. Of course, reading Barghouti in the time of genocide is freshly painful in so many ways, but his memoir is for all times, enduring beyond the present moment.
I picked up this biography of Bobby Sands in a little, leftwing bookshop in Glasgow last month, and started it on the flight to Bombay. I’m just a few chapters in - we’ve got to the point where the relentless anti-Catholic violence around him is drawing Bobby Sands into the provisional IRA - but I can already tell that this is a meticulous and painstakingly crafted biography of an individual who must be so challenging to write about. More when I finish!
What’s Happening at Strange Horizons
Check out Erik Hendel’s review of Dakini Atoll, the latest work by one of the most enigmatic writers in modern SF, Nikhil Singh.
The Indian Scene
Nothing stirring this fortnight - other than what I talked about at the beginning of this newsletter!
Recommendations Corner
Since we have a review of Nikhil Singh in Strange Horizons this week, why not give their previous novel, Taty Went West, a shot? Could be up your alley if you’re looking for your next South African cyberpunk writer, or it could be up your alley if you’re looking for new experimental SF, period. Before you do that, though, I want to recommend this absolutely brilliant interview that Geoff Ryman conducted with them a few years ago, as part of the 100 African Writers of SFF series - and I guarantee you, if you were initially wavering about whether or not to try them, this interview will convince you that you must.