The Lotus Singers
The Lotus Singers features 18 contemporary short stories by some of South Asia's best-known authors, giving readers a window into this rapidly changing part of the world. The stories come from India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bhutan, and the Maldives, and explore a wide variety of themes, including social upheaval, gender inequality, economic and spiritual struggle, and challenges to cultural orthodoxy. A combination of translations and original English works, this book is ideal for Asian literature, Asian Studies, and world literature courses, and for anyone interested in the latest offerings from South Asia’s most talented writers. The anthology includes biographical sketches of each author, a thoughtful introduction to contemporary South Asian fiction by the editor, and a preface by renowned Indian scholar and activist Urvashi Butalia.
Editor Trevor Carolan has published extensively on literature, ethics, and wisdom traditions from Asia. He earned an interdisciplinary Ph.D. at Bond University, Australia and teaches English and Creative Writing at the University of the Fraser Valley near Vancouver, Canada. In 2010, Cheng & Tsui published his companion anthology to The Lotus Singers entitled Another Kind of Paradise: Short Stories from the New Asia-Pacific.
Specs
No tour like a serious anthology such as this one to show you how a distant part of the world seems so foreign and yet so close to home.
The Lotus Singers offers intriguing glimpses of facets of South Asian life that often fail to reach the American literary market.
Seeming at first to confirm our expectations of the standard stereotypes associated with South Asia—poverty, caste, and the pressures of the traditional family—these stories turn those expectations around in bold, subtle, and intriguing ways, forcing readers to rethink everything they thought they knew about this place at the crossroads of the world.
