There’s something for every reader in ‘A Teashop in Kamalapura and Other Classic Kannada Stories’

In the stories in A Teashop in Kamalapura and Other Classic Kannada Stories, a tea-seller's lies spiral out of control, a banana sapling becomes the joy and terror of children, and two lovers meet in London. The stories vary in texture and topics, bound together by the sole thread of having been originally crafted by Kannada writers between 1900 and 1995.

Mini Krishnan serves as the collection’s editor, plucking the stories from bygone magazines and journals, while Susheela Punitha translated them with a mission to “transport the spirit of the story”. The stories span across the three phases of modern Kannada literature: Navodaya or Renaissance, like the titular “A Teashop in Kamalapura”, Pragatishila or Progressive, marked by the growing translations of stories beyond English, particularly from Russia and China, and finally, Navya or Modernism where form becomes a playground for experimentation, as in the dramatised and dialogue-centric “A Gift for the Festival”. As with the Odia and Malayalam editions of Krishnan’s series, A Teashop in Kamalapura and Other Classic Kannada Stories is a mixture of being dazzlingly historically significant while also providing an enjoyable reading experience.

Removing the shroud

Many of the collection’s strongest stories are preoccupied with the disintegrating image of institutional religion in the eyes of the general public. From the justifications of...

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